Violated

Sputtering. This time they trashed the house looking for what they didn't take last time. Hell of a welcome home. Books everywhere, as though I might have hidden something behind them, but none of them stolen, near as I can tell. Everything else, small enough to carry quickly. Well, not everything, but all the things a redneck B&E crew would want: hunting knives, hand tools (my Estwing hammer!), new scabbarded Smith and Wesson hatchet, pocket watch, complete set of flashlights. I haven't looked too closely, but some other things too. Several missing objects where there is a clean spot amidst the dust but I can't remember what was there. All the places I've lived, always isolated, remote, never locked (does no good to lock a place when it's as removed as most of my dwellings have been) and I have never been robbed. Now twice in Ohio. I hate feeling this rage, just in from a long, necessary, painful trip, so relieved to achieve the ridge intact. Home again, having been too much with the world, wishing nothing more than to start a fire, eat some soup, catch up on mail, confronted thus. I can't allow myself to stay mad. Ordinarily I might, but too many things, mental notes, that I need to access right now, and I don't want them to come through that filter. Didn't even get to Tallahassee, which was my firm intent, because the situation with my parents is considerably more difficult than either my brother or my sister had indicated. End of life issues. What steps and in what order. I was thinking about it, the entire trip down, from the very beginning, when I woke, to leave on the 18th, premonitions. It was below freezing, still dark, several inches of snow, bad footing and I was wearing crampons, carrying my laundry basket (which I use as a suitcase) under one arm and sundry supplies in a canvas tote over the other. Walking carefully, as you might imagine, thinking about how difficult it is for my parents to even walk. I don't like driving in the dark, I used to love it, but now I don't see as well, usually avoid it, but I need to get an early start, because I missed a day with the stovepipe crisis, and I want to pick-up the girls at the airport. Fog, severe dense fog for three hundred miles, at the high gaps barely crawling, thinking about the riddle. What walks on what. Late to eat, too nervous driving slowly through the fog, finally need gas, just before the Virginia line, stop, get some food and drink from the cooler, and there's a State Trooper gassing up. I engage him in conversation, talking about road conditions. He's from Georgia, understands my love for the coastal marshes, warns me about some roadwork. Rotting Spartina, or whatever the southern variation, swamp grass and dead fish. From a billboard: WET IS DRY. The new black. I had forgotten cypress trees, the knees. Rank and salty. I might yet become a swamp-rat, I love that fecund isness. Also, had forgotten Spanish Moss, what it did to the landscape. A small business I passed, a pre-fab building, somewhere in South Carolina, "Hydro Management Nano-Technology" and I wondered about that. Made a note on the back of a gas receipt, thank god for pockets. Hit the floor in Florida eating. Eating a meal is a good venue for planning the next meal. The true southern home is driven by food and my mom is no exception, she's cooked a pot-roast, with potatoes and carrots. Dad cooks a pone of cornbread. They at least have it together enough to comment on what might be said. I've been away, cut me some lack. Your needs are less than my demands. Inter-personal demands. I get that. I can deal with whatever. Tell your children I love them. I need to be alone now.