from Lemon & Rain


Stolen Moments cont…

Adams Point, Oakland.

I need to call the police. Once upstairs I take a deep breath, gather up the car data from deep in the file cabinet, then call 911. I give my name, address, make, model and license plate number. I’m told to wait for an officer.  Okay. I sit by the window and call the claims number of AAA. After being on hold for 15 minutes I finally get to relate my plight and policy number and want to make sure that I’m not responsible for whomever’s driving the car now. The responding agent tells me another agent’ll contact me in the next day or two. At least you weren’t in the car, she says kindly. I don’t tell her I’ve worked for AAA for many years.

I look out the window, take another measured breath and call my office, the AAA branch office on MacArthur. Georgia, the new receptionist answers. She says she had a car stolen too, but got it back a few days later. This is encouraging. I know she will spread the word rapidly around the office --"Trudy’s been robbed!"

Three floors below is the top of a squad car with its white hood marked with large black identifying numbers 0 8 5 8 or 8 2 8 0, depending on how panicked you are, and are able to understand logic -- north from south, front from back, forward from reverse…

I run down the stairs, unable to wait for the elevator. I greet the officer at the door. He’s a little flustered at trying to contact me. The phone line was busy. Before he steps into the building, he asks for identification. Of course, I left it upstairs with all of the other important papers. He accepts this and follows me into the elevator and up to the third floor. After examining my license and car registration, he begins to write the required police report.

“Wear glasses?” he asks, without looking up.

Oh, come on. I’m not blind. “Glasses for driving,” I admit, “but I’m not doing that at the moment.” Rushing to get the laundry done after work last night, the glasses disappeared in mismatched socks land. “Don’t really need them – I can see your name, Taylor, I can read your car number from up here.” I pull the curtain back and scan outside once more, “oh eight five eight.” 0858

Taylor smiles. “You mean -- zero three six three?” 0363

“Oh.”

“Well, you got the ‘oh’ right,” he jokes.

Right now, I’m more concerned about insight, not outsight. Glasses will turn up, and so will the car. He proceeds through a series of questions, and I answer -- No, I had not given the keys to anyone; there are no outstanding warrants against the car; yes, I was sure of where I had parked. Trudy’s not a bimbo.

I do tell him sometimes I have trouble figuring out where I had parked on the nights when I come home late. Street parking has gotten out-of-control from too many apartment-dwelling car owners. This area cannot support adequately so many apartment complexes. Legitimate parking is extremely limited. By evening time people begin parking in red zones, on corners, near fire hydrants, across driveways and sidewalks. You understand, Officer Taylor.

Officer Taylor talks about a jogger who parked his car near the Lake while going for a run -- it too had been ‘stolen’. The cautious officer took him for a drive to check the area. They found that car at a spot not far from where the jogger thought he had parked it. I understood such a story. I had an aunt who had a car ‘stolen’ while at the movies. About a month later the car was found. It had not been moved from the area. She had forgotten where she had parked; the police never found the car -- although it was within one block of its supposed theft.  That situation was pretty funny by the time it got sorted out. Unfortunately, that would not be the case with me. No, the car had disappeared definitely.

“We will do our best and contact you when, and if, the car is found.” Officer Taylor stresses, “If we are unable to reach you when the Corolla is recovered, you would then be liable for towing.” He gives me his card and says, “I’ll do a quick check of the neighborhood, just in case…” I tell him I’ll do the same.

After Officer Taylor leaves, I go for a walk around the block. You never know… As I round Vernon Street, I do a double-take when I spot a similar-looking car. The sun is reflecting off of it like a wink, a flash of attention, an errant laser beam. --- It is my fairly new, blue stolen car, safe and sound and reliably tucked at the opening of a driveway.

I had forgotten where I had parked it.

It will help to admit up-front that there isn’t anything or anyone else to blame here. Humbling, bumbling, tumbling…

I laugh at my stupidity and the excruciating embarrassment I have to deal with -- everyone from my daughter and her friend, to my work, to my neighbors, to Officer Taylor, and to the insurance company. Immediately, I think of my elderly aunt -- we had done the same thing, except she was 76 at the time. I am 39. 


MacArthur AAA office, Oakland.
The claims agent tells me he reported his car missing after attending a bachelor party. He found it a day later, when sober. And let’s not forget the lakeside jogger and auntie. That’s at least 3 others; there must be more. It seems I have joined an exclusive Not-Really-Stolen Auto Club. NRSAC.
 
When I get to work at noon I announce my morning of embarrassment. A couple of co-workers (Ted and Dori) had their cars stolen – Ted’s was swiped near the West Terminal post office; Dori’s disappeared from the McArthur Bart lot. A sympathetic lot. But no one had ever reported a car stolen that wasn’t. I was a unique NRSAC member.
 
I know how to: read and interpret maps, coordinate guidebook supplies, take a great passport photo, make spare keys out of plastic, process car registrations and membership payments, train these new part-time employees who are replacing my fulltime co-workers/friends of many years, and how to refer members to insurance policies. And now I know how to lose a car. Count on AAA for informed, experienced support and service. 

Evening.  Adams Point, Oakland.
 Thom is returning for a few days. I am not looking forward to it. Since he started his long-distance commuting three years ago I’ve thought a lot about us. I know I need to find another relationship, but am unable to face this fact. I realize what has happened: I was panicked about his return, how to deal with breaking up, how I couldn’t stand living together -- why are we still together? Convenience. Shelter.  Stability. Finances. Marital vows pledged in front of people we don’t know anymore. Our sperm and egg creation. We couldn’t possibly disappoint everyone; we need to hold up the illusion for the sake of others who might also run blindly down the aisle. These are reasons, but not the reason: I don’t feel any love, from me or from him. We’re just hiding out waiting for fate to change things. Inertia. Passivity. Smothered in compromise. I can’t remember why we’re together or where I park the car.
 
We don’t share enough to bind and bond us anymore. The first few years were full of doing things together, like having a child who now serves as a magnet for a broken marriage, a hitching post for the mad dog I’m becoming. Every move is known, every expression anticipated, every crack is apparent and causing significant depreciation.
 
Honesty is ugly at times. But this relationship has done this, has killed my better nature; hope disappeared from the horizon, except since he’s been gone I’m beginning to see something out there. I think it’s my self, waving, hurrying me along, distracting despair, encouraging me to try to get out of this suffocating cage where self-worth has disappeared. I am the co-architect of this collapse of personal civilization.
 
There comes a point where it is self-defeating to keep adapting to someone else’s changes. Each and every person is an individual with differing paths that need to be explored. Long term marriages are so full of contradictions and abnormal compromises – why in the world does society keep putting mythological marriages on a pedestal? It’s like saying that men have to be celibate to be priests. Hormones are not going to let anyone off so easily. The more they’re repressed, the more they’ll get perverted. Priests and hormones.
 
People change, situations change, square pegs fit into round holes if the hole is big enough, but when the hole starts getting narrow and unhappy from being too open to accommodate the peg, that peg is going to have problems, and so is the hole.
 
We are together. We honor each other. We expect each other to be totally faithful, to share intimacy (sex) with no other. But human nature rebels against this morality. Intimacy needs to be established whenever and wherever and as much as possible. Sex is a physical extension of that need to connect. People who understand intimacy are the most enlightened people. Intimacy is based on trust; trust is another word for love. Love gets perverted by marriage, by ‘planning’ and ‘dictating’ and ‘corralling’ all future actions. This is not possible. This is not reality. This is sappy novels, Hollywood, wedding planners and romantics who’ve been trapped into believing the forever-n-ever knot. Natural it’s not.
 
Suppressing these views overwhelm rational thought. These are the things that have been racing through my head anticipating my husband’s return. Parking a car in the middle of this mess was like remembering one blink in a day full of blinks. My spouse – I hate that pronoun, he’s not ‘mine’ I don’t own him, he doesn’t own me. Spouse sounds like a long-forgotten bird, an endangered species. Husband and wife is no better -- fairy tale characters, like Jack and Jill, tumbling down the hill. The marriage myth has created a world of disillusionment, where love is abused with false imprisonment. Love is freeing.
 
He’s about to come through that door. The cage door. First time in three weeks. I will leave this document on the computer and let him see what our marriage has done... 




                       "Stolen Moments..." from Lemon & Rain, ©2003 by John Kirkmire, © 2013 Kirkworkshop, All rights reserved.

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