Jaded

Sunday, Jul. 27, 2003 - 6:14 a.m.

The trip to Yuba City was -- eventful. I had dreaded going, and was worried that I was going to cry -- which, frankly, I'm tired of doing this year unless they're tears of happiness -- or faint, due to the terrible heat.

Neither of those things happened.

John was amazing on Saturday; he drove us up there, from under the blanket of fog into heat that seemed to roar into the car like an angry lion. There was a slight wind blowing from the north, which meant that Interstate 80 was hot and basically no fun (west to east), but Interstate 505 was slightly cooler, and interesting from an agricultural point of view, due to seeing which fields were in fallow and which had just been harvested. To top it off, it was also a burn day, which meant smoky skies.

We arrived at my stepmother's home at just before noon. Melynda Landerman is an elder in her congregation, St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church. We were glad to see each other, and she had already perused the things my parents left behind, and discovered some wonderful things. I now have my mother's high school yearbooks, her wedding ring, her wedding photo album, and a whole bunch of other wonderful stuff besides. I even found a ladybug magnet that I'd received one Easter at the age of seven. And every square centimeter of anything that had belonged to my mother and not been kept in a box was covered with a film of dust and nicotine. Bleah.

Anyway, we worked for awhile, and then we all went to lunch. After that, Melynda Landerman took us on a tour of where she worked and showed us how the city had changed. On the way back to her home & to the Garage Of Doom, we stopped at Walgreens, where I bought ten postcards, all of which I sent to Paul, because he made the terrible mistake of telling me, aka the Queen Of Postcard Wars that I was free to send them, heh heh heh... in short, the afternoon was progressing beautifully.

Beautifully, that is, until after the sorting work was done and the three of us sat down for a while before John and I headed out. Melynda Landerman took that time to tell me that I had come from an extremely dysfunctional family, that my father had not known what it was like to have a real family until he had married into hers, and that, if it was a real stone, she was planning to harvest the jade from the ring that my father had promised to give my brother, and replace it with a piece of glass. She would then use this money to pay down the mortgage. This ring has been in our family for over fifty years that can be documented. Throughout my life, I've heard my dad promise this ring to Jon a dozen times if I've heard it once.

My brother had hit some difficult times early in his marriage to Shelley, his wife of eight years that he'd known for six weeks before marrying. There were issues with student loans and whatnot -- issues which were settled before my father died. My brother had suffered a severe bout of depression when our mother died of breast cancer in 1995, and the stress and duration of her illness proved to be too much for him, and he dropped out of school for a couple of semesters. Dad didn't seem to mind this at the time, because he and Jon were able to spend a lot of time together that spring and summer, going for long drives, and decompressing, and healing. But the reason Jon didn't get the ring at that time is because Dad was afraid Jon would hock it when times got tough, and perhaps lose it. That's the only reason he held on to it as long as he did -- to make sure Jon's life was stable enough that he would never have to even think about selling the ring. That's how important it was to my father to make sure the ring went to somebody who could be trusted to never get rid of it. At the time of my father's death, and up to this moment, Jon has had steady employment as a teacher -- my father's profession.

But this is not something I was prepared to explain to Melynda Landerman while sitting there in a dazed and emotion-filled state of dishevelment. I couldn't believe what she'd told me. I just wanted to finish up there, and I knew my husband did too -- so I pasted a smile on my face, and we concluded our visit.

We went to go and drop off a box of things at my grandmother's for Jon to pick up, and then we headed on out, leaving Yuba City at six pm, and getting back in under the welcoming fog by eight thirty. It took another hour to get home. (In fact, we saw something we never saw before; a driver actually pulled over to the breakdown lane on the Bay Bridge approach, leaped out of his car, danced a jig over to the other side of his automobile, and had himself the World's Longest And Most Wonderful Pee Ever.)

I'd been asked by two people to call when I got home, so I did. I rang Gran -- and I also rang Paul. He picked up and asked me about my day, and if it was difficult, etc. So, as I was relaying a thumbnail of the day's events, and when I got to the part about Melynda Landerman -- THAT is when I finally got upset. So we finished speaking, and I took a shower, and then sat down at the computer and composed and sent the following letter to her:

I thought about what you said on my way home Saturday night -- and upon reflection, I think that your plan to harvest the jade from my father's ring and keep the money from its sale is very disappointing to me, and here is why.

On the day of my father's funeral, you gave me your promise that as soon as you could bear to remove it from your finger, it would go to Jon. That promise was one of the things that got me through that very difficult day -- knowing that a Landerman tradition -would- eventually be carried out, as soon as you could do so. That's why I looked at your hands and was initially so completely happy -- because as the ring was not there, I thought, based on your promise to me, that the family tradition of passing the ring from son to son to son had at last been completed.

Now, I find that in the interest of money, a family tradition has been stalled, and could fall by the wayside. I cannot see in any way how your plan for my father's ring honors his memory.

It's your ring now, to do whatever you want with, of course -- but at the very least, before you put your plan into action, would you PLEASE seek counseling from Chris K.? [her pastor.] Tell him what you want to do with that ring. Tell him I'll be more than happy to fill him in on what I've heard my father promise to my brother for the length of my life.

If my viewpoint still carries any weight at this juncture, I would say to go ahead and pass the ring on to Jon, in the same condition it was when it left my father's hand. My brother has made vast strides in his job and home life since my father died -- I think it's been a wakeup call. I think he's earned that ring -- A ring which reminded a man of a father whose time came too soon.

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I have no idea how this letter will be received.

Cross your fingers for me, my loves... But if I know my Melynda Landerman like I think I do, she's going to keep that ring. Or at the very least, I won't see that ring again until she realizes it's not just a trinket. If then.

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Although we didn't find the walnut (see yesterday's post) I did get something that is priceless to me, that I was looking for, but that Melynda Landerman finally found -- The journal that my mother kept during the first two years of my life. So far as I have ever been able to ascertain, she didn't do that for Jon.

By the time this entry is composed and posted, I will have been awake for twenty-four hours. It's been a day. John was asleep almost the minute his shower was finished. I'm going to go join him now, at least for awhile. I am, as they say, 'motionly and fizzily zausted'.

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And finally, the answer to my quiz yesterday...

The names of the cities begin and end with the same letter. :)

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