I look down on the old place and see the kitchen door, the most used entrance and exit on the place, being repeatedly slammed and falling apart. I see the person slamming the door is in an emotional state. Now the place is all fixed up and rented out to somebody for top dollar, I even get some sharing from that once in a while. I am looking back through the years, most of a decade, to a time when myself and a sharp tongued individual were occupying the place, temporarily, as it turned out, although my father had told me, before he passed, that the place was to be mine. All his other offspring had received gifts of real estate from him or with his help. This was mine.

The person I choose to share my life with had a very difficult childhood. He was born with two club feet and two twisted leg bones. He spent the first 5 years of his life alternating between casts and polio braces, both extremely painful. He endured a series of operations until, at the age of 5 years old, he was at last able to stand on his feet and take his first tentative step. His twisted legs had survived unsuccessful surgeries, multiple threats of amputation, then an experimental procedure where the leg bones had been removed, chopped up, replaced and casted well past the extent of the endurance of the crippled four-year-old. Lonely, in pain, and crying in the hospital, he was shot up with dose after dose of tranquilizers, drugs that built up in his system contributing to the chronic asthma he battled until well into his teens. He played the tenor saxophone and the flute, developing the strong chest of a wind player, finally defeating the asthma. As an older teen and young adult, he found Natural Hygiene, and went on a series of water fasts. Miraculously, he runs, walks and hikes.

Right before the verbal tirade that put me in a door slamming tizzy, law enforcement officers had entered our home unnoticed by either of us. I became aware after the door to the room I was in (the master bedroom downstairs that we used as a study) was knocked on. I was on the computer researching the choral piece, Adoramus Te. I thought it was my husband at the door, and wondered why he didn’t just come in. Fretting at what I thought was an unnecessary interruption in my work, I walked to the door, opened it, and was shocked to see a uniformed stranger standing there. I just want to point out that Jim isn’t the only one who has some unpleasant memories involving police, I do too. They came up and I had to push them back down, remain present, and try to understand what this man was doing in my home. Somewhere behind him was another I think. I remember there being two, although I only related directly to one of them.

“Is Larry Henderson here?” he asked, naming a name shared by my son-in-law, step-grandson, and my daughter’s father-in-law. I surmised that it was the step-grandson he was after having heard that the 20-year-old had stolen a car, done some time, and was then on parole. At the time, the boy had another set of grandparents right across the street, but I didn’t volunteer that information. He wasn’t biologically related to either one of us, and the only time he had been at our home in the past year was when my granddaughter his age (his step sister) had also been there. That information I was forthcoming about.

They seemed to want to look around to make sure. I probably had the right to ask for a search warrant, but since neither my husband nor I do any kind of drugs or illegal activity I didn’t really have an objection. Jim was in the east upstairs bedroom. I hurried up there and opened the door, intending to let him know what was going on. He was reclined on the bed. When I opened the door the policeman again asked for Larry Henderson. I was not able to shield Jim from a frightening awakening, and after the police left I was blamed.

I had to have a bowel movement but didn’t know how to excuse myself to isolate myself in the bathroom until they left. By that time my pants required laundering. It had been a fairly unpleasant ordeal for me as well. 

Is it funny yet? Can I laugh about having been expected to shield my partner from all unpleasantness when I was knee deep in unpleasantness myself? 

My home bring snatched out from under me is no laughing matter either. I drew up the papers and went to court. I bought a hybrid Honda SUV and a travel trailer with the settlement. I’m happy, but sometimes I would like a little more living space and a bigger garden then just a few potted plants. I showed my sister a video of my tiny garden, and she said she was happy to see it. Sometimes I think she didn’t mean to deprive me. My brother’s aggressive appropriation because of his wife’s gambling put a strain on the family  finances. So here I am living on the kindness of a cousin of my husband. My sister-in-law gambled away the family fortune at a casino, resulting in my homelessness. For two years now we have parked our travel trailer on land sustained in part by a gambling institution.