The Yuba City Walnut

Saturday, Jul. 26, 2003 - 7:29 a.m.

John and I are going to Yuba City today. It's going to be forty degrees warmer there than it is here. I'm going there to visit my stepmom and to retrieve some family belongings. I will be wearing work clothes and fighting the dust and the spiders and the nicotine in an uninsulated garage.

Last night I told John -- and later on the phone I told Paul -- that I *never* wanted it to be twenty four hours later already so much in my life.

I couldn't care less about the big stuff. In 1995, Dad sold my mother's piano the minute she died, and the pain surrounding that particular material loss has left an indelible mark inside of me. I learned to play on that piano; an old upright Baldwin Acrosonic -- but it's just completely gone now. So, the big stuff? Pweh. Nothing else could hurt that bad. Throw all of the old furnishings in the dump for all I care.

But the little stuff is another story. Lots of little treasures with vivid and moving memories.

Mom and Dad used to have a little walnut. Nothing special, just a plain old walnut. For the entire thirty-five years of their marriage, they took turns hiding that walnut back and forth within each other's possessions. Sometimes it showed up in Dad's lunch bucket. Other times it would be in Mom's most recent box of crafting supplies. Once, it even got lodged in one of their bowling balls, and rather than destroy the walnut getting it out of the finger hole, they hit the ball with a hammer until the percussion knocked it loose. The bowling ball was ruined, but then again, that wasn't important.

I'm going to look for that walnut today.

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Anyway. Speaking of Yuba City, here's a quiz for you until I return. Please make your guesses in the comments section, and I'll tell you the answer in tomorrow's post. :) ready?...

What do the following cities have in common?

Atlanta GA
St Louis MO
New Haven CT
Rochester NY
Eugene OR
Orlando FL
Lowell MA
Flagstaff AZ
Cadillac MI
Yuba City CA
Gaithersburg MD
Hialeah FL

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That's it for now. I have more preparations to make and things to take care of; allegedly we're bugging out of here at eight.

I miss you already.

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