correction

apparently my father didn't actually buy another new lawn tractor. my brother visited my parents for thanksgiving, and has corrected the misinformation. my father did buy a new machine, but it was a leaf vacuum/shredder, not a lawn tractor as originally reported here. that bit of inaccurate reportage originated with the neighbor whom my father asked to help fuel his new machine. the neighbor, well aware of my father's declining memory and cognitive function, called one of my sisters to say, "he bought a new tractor and is asking me to help put fuel in it. is this OK? should i help him?" to which my sister said "yes, go ahead. if he really wanted the tractor, he should have it and enjoy it." now that i think about it, the neighbor called my sister before he ever saw the "tractor," so it's possible...probable...that my father called it a tractor when he asked for help (having forgotten its actual name).

in other news, my dad gave my brother his only remaining gun. here is what my brother said about it (quoting his email):

Another development over the weekend- After I finished working on their
grandmother clock and was returning tools to his workshop, dad was sitting with
the cat and asked if he could ask a "funny question." Then he asked if I liked
guns, to which I replied that I did, in fact I have several. Then he asked if I
wanted his gun and went off on some story about how he got it after World War II
when he left the ship, officers were allowed to take their sidearms with them.
Then he said that it was almost illegal because it was such a powerful gun. I'm
thinking to myself, "I know you bought it 10 years ago and it's a .357 magnum
and there's nothing remotely illegal about it." Of course, I've learned not to
challenge him. It's best to just let him believe whatever he wants to believe.

Anyway, the bottom line is that he gave me his gun, so it's out of the house.
I'm going to go to the Dearborn police tomorrow to see what I need to do to
transfer ownership.

my interpretation: dad doesn't remember what he did 10 years ago, but he remembers being discharged from the navy. perhaps he was allowed to take his sidearm with him, though i kind of doubt it. in any case, he doesn't remember buying the .357 magnum, and it probably reminds him of his old service revolver, so he has concocted this story to explain why he has it. had it. i guess my brother has it now.

the brain is a funny thing, isn't it? that and our propensity to construct seamless narratives (i'm choosing not to problematize the "our" for now...).

:::::sigh::::: this weekend i have been missing my family and feeling homesick. i think i'm just generally missing everyone i've ever lost touch with, or just plain lost from my life altogether. deep interpersonal connections are one casualty of a semi-nomadic life...and every now and then i am acutely aware of that loss. with my ex-husband, after we broke up it hit me when i started to tell a story to a friend and realized that the story wouldn't make sense to her, that it would never make sense again because it was a story i had shared with him, and suddenly his half of it was just...out of reach and gone from my life.

poof.

makes me wonder how much sense, or what kind of sense, my journal entries make to people who don't actually share my life, who don't know me in "real life" and thus have never shared any lived, material experiences with me. makes me wonder how much i'm missing when i read other peoples' journals--the people i do and don't know in "real life."