A Tale Untold

Dear Diary. . . . 

My mother had visitors from her church yesterday afternoon, the same three people who have come to see her in the hospital and at the rehab center.  Very nice people, all from Venezuela.  When I made breakfast for my mother, she said that they were bringing over food when they came.  They were going to play Bingo.  Since they were coming at two, I asked my mother if she thought she would want dinner at five.  

"Oh, lord. . . no."

"Then I think I'll take myself to a sushi dinner."

I cleaned up the house, sweeping, mopping, arranging, then got ready for the gym.  I don't like going to the gym on Saturdays, but I missed some during the week taking my mother to doctor's appointments, so. . . .  But it was awful.  The Y has youth basketball on Saturdays, so the lot was full and I had to drive around for a long time before a car pulled out of a spot.  Inside, there seemed to be more adults watching five and six year olds "play" basketball than there were kids playing.  There were the stay-at-home moms and the slender athletic dads, cocksure up-and-comers in their inevitable baseball hats, men who talk golf and baseball and tennis, all looking like they stepped out of the pages of a republican magazine or a Norman Rockwell painting.  

Back at my house, I guess I was exhausted, for I lay on the bed and slept the afternoon away.  By the time I woke, I needed to get ready for dinner.  

Always the early diner now, I was the only one seated at the sushi bar.  The dinner rush was an hour or two away.  The waitress came straight off with water, and since I am a bit of a Rain Man, I said, "Surely you know what I want."  

And she did--every item.  I was kidding, of course, and was astonished since the only time I have been here since Tennessee left town was last week, and then I had a different waitress.  I have only had this one once before, and that was the last dinner T and I had together, more than a month ago.  Just that once.  

"That is amazing," I said.  "How do you do that?"

"I just remember the last time you came in with your friend," she said.  

Holy smokes.  

Two carafes of sake and a full dinner later, it was time to get back to take care of my mother.  I left the waitress with a generous tip, of course.  It's a way of being remembered.  

I was home a little past six, so I watched the last half of the England/Norway match with a glass of worm killer.  

And that's how I spent the rest of the evening--watching t.v. with mom.  I've been watching the 2015 Australian series, "The Beautiful Lie," with her.  She likes the show.  

I couldn't stay awake for the second half of Sweden/Argentina.  By ten I was in bed.  

And that, my friends, is the exciting life of a memorable character.  

Here I am looking like the Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz" with the girls who loved me in the streets of Pamplona.  I shouldn't show this picture if I had any ego left, but it has flown the coupe by and large, and somehow I have to work my way back to the Pamplona narrative. 

Truly, though, I've already given away the climax of the story.  All that is left to tell is about the bullfight, about watching the same bulls I ran with in the morning find "Death in the Afternoon."  Have you read it?  Oh, it is like reading the chapter titled "Cetaceans" in Melville's "Moby Dick."  Don't.  I told my students to skip it.  

But the vocabulary.  I need to bone up on it before I tell the tale.  I'll do that today and tell the tale tomorrow, which I believe is the last day of the celebration taking place right now.  A bullfight is a primitive thing and not something my lefty crowd can appreciate.  It is difficult watching a thing murdered, and I don't really recommend it, but. . . I did, and I will tell it. 

Tomorrow.  There is nothing that can't be done tomorrow.