EXIT ONLY by TERRY MAROTTA

Here’s why I’M thankful on this last day of the long giving-thanks weekend:

6.Yet again this morning whatever shape we find ourselves in, that big old curtain went up for us all.

Dateline Phoenix: We flew in last night and drove straight from the airport to the house that had been offered to us for the weekend – only to find it standing open, the kitchen window smashed and shards of glass everywhere, computer gone, printer gone, DVD players gone, and we didn’t know what-all else. Plus every drawer and cabinet had been yanked open. and darkness was comin’ on fast.

“I can’t stay here tonight!” I told old Dave.

“It’ll be fine” he told me back, which is what he says even when bits of your busted appendix start coming out your nose.

“Take me out to eat?” I squeaked, which seemed like a good plan to us both since we’d just come off a six-hour plan flight with no food on it. And when we came back a Parking Control truckidled by the house next door. We thought, Why not? so rolled on up and told our story to the cop inside it.

“DO NOT RE-ENTER THE HOUSE, HARM COULD COME TO YOU, REMAIN IN INSIDE YOUR VEHICLE!” she ordered us and quick as a wink called it in on her radio. And in about 20 minutes here came one Officer Kleck, crime-scene kit in hand.

“This must’ve been recent,” said Officer Kleck, standing between the smashed kitchen window and the open sliding door. “We’ve had some big winds lately and things would be really tossed around here otherwise.”

He let me walk with him him as he went around the house gathering evidence.

“Don’t you think this place is SCARY?” I said, trotting close begin him as David curled up on the couch and started watching sports on the one TV that must have been deemed to huge for them to take. “It’s like the Haunted Mansion! I mean most of the lights are burned out and there are those fliers plastered all over the front door… That’s how the thieves knew the place was empty huh?”

“Yep,” said Officer Kleck.

“Well so I don’t think we should sleep here because what if they COME BACK for what they missed?”

“Looks like they took all the DVDs,” he mused, examining a yanked-out drawer by the entertainment center.

Ah! So then maybe it was just kids, right?”

“Kids or tweekers.”

“Tweekers?”

“You know: druggies; meth addicts,” he said.

“Oh GOD!” I said.

“They did leave this nice little flat screen TV behind,” he said,  and that laptop over there so they COULD  come back - but I’m betting they won’t.”

He went on taking pictures of the mess, then brought out his fingerprint kit and left some forms for the owners to fill out. Finally, in a burst of old fashioned chauvinism, he took down DAVID’S information, shook HIS hand and ambled on out to his cruiser.

“I’m pulling these fliers off the door right now so the bad guys will know the house is at least occupied!” I said to David – and saw right away on the smallest one a hand-written note, signed by the pool guy: “Side window broken, back door standing open,” it said, “8am October 30.”

The fliers: the door:

I ran after Our Man Kleck with it, just as he was ready to pull away in his cruiser.

“Well this is great ’cause now we can pinpoint the time of the crime!” he said with a big smile, though he STILL didn’t ask MY name or shake MY hand.

He was one happy public servant, though not half as happy as I was. Because THIS meant the break-in happened almost a month ago! THAT”S why the lights were burned out! They’d broken in and at night and just left them all on! And come to look around a bit, the furniture was dusty as all-get-out from those big old winds he’d referred to!

By then it was full dark but within the next 30 minutes David had patched the window with cardboard, swept away the glass, cleaned up the entire house, and was sitting down again to watch the ballgame.

So what could I do but take my cue from him?  “Oh well” I thought; crawled into the bed, slept like a baby the whole night through and woke feeling safe and grateful to see the sun shining on this pretty little scene out back.

Because it looks as though you can take the electronics and take the DVD’s and make one hell of a mess on the night of your crime besides but you still can’t steal the sunlight or the new morning that it shines on.

Last week at the supermarket I came upon a bin of a half-price Halloween stuff which was exciting for me since I’m always JUST A LITTLE late for every holiday besides which: I do love a skeleton.

I’d just begun examining one bald and clattery dude, thinking maybe THIS is what I can use to explain the pelvis to little Eddie Marotta, four, when suddenly the meat guy heaved out of the back room, bloody apron and all, and hollered “Buy him! The guy is crying out for you to buy him!” – and pressed a button on the top of this dude’s plastic noggin and what do you think? – he stuck out a six-inch tongue and said something sort of harsh and smart-aleck-y in the voice of a Rodney-Dangerfield-style comic.

I bought him on the spot and he rode around in my van for six days, his bony feet and his domed skull just peeking out from the top of the shopping bag. Then yesterday he came inside for our uncle’s 88^th birthday party.

Little Eddie was there but he didn’t make much of him – kids are so over these talking toys with their microchips and their scripted remarks. His innocent angel of an 18-month-old brother, however, took one horrified look and practically jumped clear out of his Pampers.

As to the rest of the fam, they just shook their heads and said it was a pity SOME people didn’t understand that these were hard economic times and excuse me but what happened to restraint? TERRY?

They were just jealous, the losers. They’re always jealous.

Luckily they were all cleared out by 9 o’clock this morning when I set my buddy up in a coupla different spots and took some pictures. You see him silent at the top and delivering one of his jokes here below.  I’m leaving him around til Christmas Eve I think when I finally put up the tree because, face it, the guy is so suave already; just think how great he’ll look in an ascot and Santa hat, clutching a big old cup of egg nog!

“Hit me!”

I have felt so ecstatically happy since Election Day that I look back at the column I wrote the week before and can’t believe how sorrowful it seems. In fact so very different in tone it is from the way I have been feeling for these last two weeks I couldn’t bring myself to post it here at the top where it says ‘This Week’s Column’ so let me copy it below where it will live forever as a post and not disappear and be replaced as the column is each week. It’s not that much fun but it had God in it and also my wonderful old friend and fellow blogger Milton. Here it is:

I once bumped into an acquaintance who asked me what college my daughter was hoping to attend the following year and so I told her. “Oh, I would never my daughter go there!” she exclaimed with delicate horror. “It’s full of lesbians!”

It’s funny but I felt a wave of kindness toward her and so went and put my hand on her arm: “You must know that isn’t true, Sarah.” (I will call her Sarah.) And even if there are lesbians here and there in colleges, they’re our daughters first aren’t they? Our own young people?”

I was calm in those days.

I was less calm last week after my conversation with the Postal clerk I will call John. I was sending something to one of our honorary sons, a young man we have long loved and a brand-new homeowner. I asked him if the letter would get there fast; I was worried because it held important documents.

He read aloud the name of the city and shook his head. “Tough area,” he said unsmilingly.

“What do you mean?”

“Full of minorities” he answered with lowered voice.

“HE’S A MINORITY HIMSELF JOHN,” I said with a voice not at all lowered. I embarrassed him – made an awkward moment – but for the first time in my life as a careful and courteous female I didn’t care.

And so a silence hung between us until our transaction was complete and I had thanked him and turned away.

But ever since I’ve been wondering: What is wrong with us all? An hour earlier, in another place of business, a man passing the time of day there said to the shop owner and me, “Barack Obama was handed through college, same as that WIFE!” For some reason tears sprang to my eyes and maybe the shop-owner saw them because self-proclaimed McCain man though he is, he led me aside, and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t listen to him; he’s not himself today” he murmured, thus showing kindness to us both.

And later he told me that he too is troubled by the high feeling we have seen in this political season now just ended.

I think of something I just read by Milton Brasher Cunningham, songwriter, ordained minister, student of history and professional chef. He writes a blog called Don’t Eat Alone where he cites the Biblical verse “Be Ye Kind One to Another” as the idea he most needs to keep in mind.

“I would love to say I have mastered the art of kindness and moved on, but it is not so,” he writes.

His favorite station was having its fundraiser one day and so he turned the dial to hear something other than the appeals for money and landed on the local talk radio station. “I felt as though I had crossed into a parallel universe. That they presented a view farther to the right of NPR for me was not a surprise; the level of volume and vitriol was, however. These are guys who command huge audiences across the country, or at least that’s my perception. How can anger that severe be so popular?”

That is his question. Mine is, What can we do about this?

Milton says we can remember this: that “regardless of our political preferences, our fundamental allegiances are to God and to one another. “Not to country. Not to party. Not to ideology…. Not to class or race or even religion. “To God,” he repeats “and to one another.” And that’s a truth I mean to remember from this day forward.

Yesterday when I went to buy flowers at the Nursery Where Bargains Don’t Abound the slack-jawed teen behind the register asked me if I’d be using my senior discount again today.

“What?” I yelled. I couldn’t help it.

“Sorry” said this sullen child, only he wasn’t. Sorry, that is. The young never are. “You look like this other lady who comes in all the time,” he said, poker-faced.

“I COME IN ALL THE TIME. THAT’S ME! I said in full Jerry Seinfeld holler.

“Whatever,” he sighed with that infuriating look kids sometimes get when they’re seniors in high school. “You losers are already part of my past,” it means.

We completed our transaction. Then “How old are these seniors with their senior discount?” I asked.

“Sixty,” he said.

“Sixty! Do I seem 60 to you?” I yelped again, still channeling Jerry.

Again the expressionless look.

“BECAUSE I WON’T BE SIXTY FOR THREE MORE MONTHS!”

And then, at last, the sun came out: the darn kid smiled and hallelujah I was free to live another day and not wilt on the stem quite yet..

BOY was it hard to get up and hurry away Wednesday morning with all that post-election excitement in the air. Our babies had slept over so their two mums could watch the returns at our other girl Annie’s house where the food is always so yummy. They had asked and I’d said Sure we’d love to have them only I couldn’t really help much in the morning since I had to leave at 6 for my turtle-crawl out to the Albany Times-Union for a noon appointment. “I mean I won’t be able to make bacon or scramble any eggs or pick them up warm from their beds and kiss their little faces” I told them  But hey they were sleeping HERE, remember? they were coming back HERE after, and they did come back and I could have left at 6 like I was supposed to only, well I just HAD to make them all some bacon and scramble them all a few eggs so it was 8:30 by the time I left and I raced over that Mass Pike and screeched into the Times Union parking lot at five of twelve, shirttails flying.

And two hours after that I had to be at the big Public Radio station to record these little essays for WAMC’s wonderful morning show “The Roundtable.” Co-host Sarah LaDuke set me up and away I went, reading my copy, squeezing all the personality I could manage into the teensy holes of that mic, being so careful – not to ‘pop’ my p’s for one thing but also because I do seem to have a bit of that ol’ Marky-Mark Boston accent and it’s embarrassing when you’re talking about a low-carb diet and everyone thinks you’re referring to corn cobs. and really the  whole recording for the radio thing is just this wickedly hard high-wire act for me, a do-or-die, here’s-180-seconds-kid -don’t-screw-it-up kind of thing and by the way couple million people are gonna hear it. Whew!

And after all THAT I got lost on my way to the hotel and it was dark and cold when I got there finally and then my key wouldn’t work so they gave me a new key.  No dice. Another new key along with an escort by the maintenance man in case I didn’t know how to slip a plastic card into a slot but STILL no dice. A third new one and my escort and I remained locked out of my room, and this time he swore in Spanish and winged that key clear into the meadow outside my sweet suite of rooms in this nice little Residence Inn.

Finally, totally exasperated after trying yet another key he said, “Look, can you just stay inside tonight and like NOT GO ANYWHERE and I’ll replace the lock in the morning?” And I said I sure could and Management gave me a free Weight Watcher frozen dinner and a free Duraflame log for the cute little fireplace and I did JUST HAPPEN to have a fat 24-ounce Budweiser from the gas station I filled up at 30 minutes before so tell ya what: I crawled into that bed with my food and drink, watched maybe 11 minutes of post-election excitement and was  sound sleep by 8pm, safe, and full, and shut up tight in my room just like it was my baby days again and this was my nap.

(the original fun guy this guy)

I’ve been gone WAY too long here, driving a zillion miles the day after the election, talking my face off at a library workshop and then on WAMC Northeast Public Radio…and of course voting like everyone else and speaking of that here’s an Election Day lesson for ya:

I promised to hold a sign for our new state rep Jason Lewis but being lame and pathetic said I could only do it for an hour – whereas one of my three fellow Jason Lewis signsters had been at the polls since 6am and said he could stay til suppertime if they needed him. He’d worked on Ted Kennedy’s Presidential run in 1980 and also for the late Gerry Studds, longtime congressman from the Cape. He knew from elections.

So did the second sign holder, at six foot six the tallest member of our cohort, a young guy in a watch cap and shades who I realized only a full minute into things was little Tim Waterbury from my Sixth Grade Sunday School class who back at age 11 liked to be courted to join the discussion but then came into it like gangbusters.

The third sign-holder was a beautiful blonde woman from Russia who told us her uncle had pioneered work on a below-the-radar, tunnel-under-the-earth missile system so scary and top secret that he could never leave Russia as she had done back in ’96.  She gave her name but I know I didn’t catch it – Americans are idiots when it comes to understanding people from other countries even if they are speaking our very language – but I got to work asking her all sorts of questions anyway.

And she gave me lots of answers: About her children, and the free-for-all version of capitalism at play in the former Soviet Union now; about Strongman Putin in whom George Bush said he found such a soul mate; even about fun guy Putin’s Driver’s Ed pupil current Russian President Medvedev who yesterday’s news said could have that old steering wheel wrested away from him any day now by the little giant in the seat beside him.

It was coming on toward noon and when I said I had to go she also glanced won at her watch and said “probably I should go as well. I have a class at MIT at 1:30.”

“Oh, are you taking a course there?” I asked, thinking Adult ESL maybe, moron that I am.

“I’m teaching it!” she laughed. “My husband and I are geneticists there. And THANK GOD for intellectual property laws in US, because between the two of us we now hold six patents. If we are back in Russia? We hold nothing!” And with a laugh and a merry wave of her hand she was gone.

The Tweedles (Dum and Dee)

I had a dream last night in which I had just died. I was dashing around – flying actually, over scenes like the one above, recently visited – and so didn’t realize I was dead until I swooped back over my body sitting in my same clothes from that morning, seat belt still on, so to speak.

I didn’t look dead – just kind of deflated is all, like our little cat looked in the gutter after that car killed her, and all I could think was “So wait that anxious get-it-done, get-it-done girl wasn’t even ME?”?

It wasn’t a sad dream though really, not like the one I had about my mother a couple of months after she died. In that one we were at the cemetery, the whole noisy family. I was scooping dirt from the grave to take home with me and my cousin Carolyn was saying “What are you going to do with THAT?” My husband was shivering in his best suit and Cousin George was just wading over to him: “Ever hear of an OVERCOAT?” he wryly remarked, only all that really happened. The dream was that my mother was there with us.

“Gosh isn’t it cold!” she said. “I can’t wait to get back to the house! Do you have somebody there making the coffee and setting out the food?”

“Oh Mom I’m sorry but you… you can’t come. You have to go lie down there,” I said in the dream, pointing to the box, pointing to the open hole, and woke feeling about as desolate as ever I have felt in this life.

The other day I saw my former neighbor in a book store. Her husband was the heart of our town before he died in his sleep in a few summers back. He used to cut his grass in the pitch dark if the sun dared go down, using his headlights so he could see. He’d rive through the downtown in his pickup, yelling jokey hellos to people every 30 feet. He crashed a Halloween party we gave once; appeared in a gorilla suit, joined the dancing briefly, made apelike gestures and, even grabbed a sandwich before leaving without ever opening his mouth to say who he was.

Seeing his widow I suddenly realized something. “You know what I just remembered Joanna? I dreamed about Dave last night!”

“Oh! You did really?” she said with a face of inexpressible longing. “I haven’t dreamed of him in so long! How is he?”

The longer I live the more I think that last remark reveals the larger truth: when we leave here we don’t go lie down in a box. We take off our seatbelts and fly.