I’m dragging the garbage bin out to the curb. At about 200 pounds,
it’s way too heavy, and I’m thinking I’ll probably put my back out. I’m
not as young as I used to be. Worse yet, the side of the thing is
splitting where I repaired it with duct tape four years ago.
It occurs to me I should order a new one. Is there a choice of
colors? Probably not. Waste management is waste management, and if I
got one in chartreuse, for example, the homeowners’ association would
complain.
It’s the job of the next person who will live here, anyway.
As I go back to shouldering my burden, figuring the odds of making
it to the curb before the thing busts open, a tarantula the size of a
teenager’s hand walks across the gravel between my feet.
“Hello, handsome,” I say. And he stops. Either he likes being called
“handsome,” or he’s amused at this woman muscling an about-to-burst
garbage bin. A scientist would say it has something to do with my
putting the bin aright and leaning over to look at him, thereby
changing the shadows. Maybe he’s wondering what kind of trouble he’s
in.
None. Not from me. I’m fighting the urge to lean over and pet him.
He’s furry and agile, about five different colors across his back and
rear. As he begins his walk again, it’s with unparalleled grace and
delicacy, as if traversing water instead of gravel. I never realized it
before, but you can see God in the grace of a tarantula’s walk.
Living in Tucson, I saw a lot of things. I saw skies like the ones
my father used to paint when I was a kid: five shades of black, 10 of
gray and 15 orbiting but never quite touching the color red. He’d been
here years ago and removed to Southern California, but never stopped
seeing those colors. I saw snow capping a saguaro, then falling so
insistently that I had to pull over while driving south on Oracle Road,
back when it was trivial, barely even a boulevard.
I saw a very bad play by Sam Shepard, with a screaming meemie of an
actress clutching a threadbare dead crow. It was during that same snowy
winter, I think: 23 degrees outside in the middle of the afternoon. But
as I stood there on the sidewalk just off Congress Street, I was damned
if I was going to go back in there and watch that shitty play.
I saw lightning strikes and flash floods, a concrete picnic table
broken in half. I heard thunder that rattled the windows and sent every
living thing in the house scurrying for cover. I saw my children born,
watched them take their first steps, weather their first heartbreaks. I
felt them push me away when they reached adolescence, then circle back
around upon realizing I wasn’t so bad.
To everything, there is a season, and a time to every purpose under
heaven. That guy knew what he was talking about. I can’t remember …
was it Roger McGuinn or the Old Testament? One of those.
I miss those days when Tucson was a sleepy town full of bad plays,
where you couldn’t get a meal after 8 at night. I miss the days when
Wilmot Road was the edge of town, when Mount Lemmon and even Sabino
Canyon were day trips.
I watched the junk stores on Grant Road turn into antique shops,
then back into junk stores again. And what about those suicide
lanes—remember those? I always wondered what kind of homicidal
maniac disguised as a traffic engineer dreamed those up.
Whenever someone leaves a place, there’s a tendency to insist it’s
turned to shit. It’s a nasty thing to do, like pissing in the bathtub
before your younger siblings have gotten out.
I’m disinclined to do any such pissing. I’m just going to leave
quietly.
So take heart. Local theater is getting so much better, and so is
the music; in fact, word has it, since Austin’s not Austin anymore,
that Tucson is the new Austin. As for food, not only can you get a meal
at all hours nowadays; it might be any cuisine from Ethiopian to
Vietnamese.
Take care of the wildlife, will you? I worry so much about the
wildlife.
And for Christ’s sake, get rid of that goddamned dog track.
I love you all, and thanks.
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2009.
Dear Catherine: I know how you feel. I was born and raised here. You will move on – there are places to go and people to meet – but one thing I can tell you from my life of trying to leave Tucson, its siren’s song will pull you back one day.
With all that is wrong with Tucson, it is still like your mother. It gets on your nerves, makes you crazy, frustrates the heck out of you but you miss her endlessly when she is gone. That’s the phenomenon known as Tucson.
Good luck to you.
Catherine, that was most likely a ‘she’. Males tend to be smaller and narrower in the abdomen.
Catherine, as a newcomer to Tucson (a mere yearling) I’ve seen all of the beauty you describe but none of the things lost. I know it’s painful to see change to something you love and it’s hard to tell from your article, but I hope your motivations for leaving are because of new opportunities and not because you’ve lost your old Tucson. Because the amazing beauty of Tucson is still here. Maybe it’s just easier to see with these newcomer’s eyes.
Dear RTTucson,
You’ll get sick of Tucson soon enough. But the Sonoran Desert is a great place to visit. Rent, don’t buy!
Catherine, After 35 years in Tucson, my job forced a relocation to SoCal two years ago. House a few blocks from the beach north of San Diego, sun, surf, culture, restaurants, beautiful people… I’d give it up in a heartbeat if I could move back and smell the creosote after a monsoon and see the sun come up over the Rincons. There is some elemental force there that weaves itself into your soul and doesn’t diminish with time. I’ve enjoyed your writing and if I haven’t made you reconsider your move, wish you well wherever you’re headed.
Hi Catherine. I’ve been a fan of yours forever. I’m going to miss you.
Seems like several of you great commentators are leaving so we are so much poorer for that.
Maybe you will return. I’ve tried to leave several times. It can get kinda sucky here sometimes, but it is realy just me. I leave, and find it sucks so much more everywhere else! I come back.
Maybe you will be publishing in another paper? You can send us a link?
Bueno.
Thanks for telling us, anyway, rather than just slipping away and not saying goodbye.
Stay warm,
Jake Elkins
tucson_heat@yahoo.com
Tucson
I have a suggestion if you are going to pursue a similar career elsewhere: Please try to practice writing articles that are not peppered with four-letter words, and using bodily functions as metaphors. Otherwise you seem a talented writer; you don’t need to use expletives in every article you write to convey your ideas. Your writing in that respect reminds me of a kid in school who has just learned such words and feels compelled to use them to excess to impress people. It’s not impressive.
Gary
Gary: What’s wrong with certain four letter words? They’re just … words.
Jimmy,
I use them (the so-called four letter words) from time to time myself. Personally I mostly use them for emphasis. For those who use them all the time the emphasis is lost. I don’t use them around stangers (people I don’t know) because there are some people, after all, who aren’t comfortable with certain words. When I write a letter to the editor, or send an email to a business, for example, I would never consider using the type of language about which we are speaking.
So…I just find it unusual when I see an article with expletives and certain metaphors (always by the same writer.) It’s not my own style. Ms. O’Sullivan obviously doesn’t feel that way at all. I guess she might walk into her bank and say “Shitty day outside, isn’t it? I’d like to cash this fucking check.” Again, it can be offensive to some people. Most other writers in your paper seem to get by without the expletives.
Gary
Don’t go. It’s a jungle out there. And you are going to take a big chunk out of the sane/loony ratio.