Good to the Last Drop

TW: Abandonment issues.

I used to envy people bragging on their family trees and illustrious histories. So many royals, battles, and mansions on the hill. Named for a general? Cool. The conversation always stalled when I asked, ‘And what great things have you done?’ Blank stares and heated debate about the Dodgers’ stats followed.

Go ahead, blame sour grapes. Lacking estate, I’m descended from a dumpster in an alley behind a liquor store, on a hill. Have you heard of it? Found sired by a dumpster, blue from desperate crying. How long must one scream to gain that bluish tinge? It wasn’t cold out. I generated it all by my lonesome.

Regardless, I am who I am, through my efforts. No forebears to blame nor shadows from which to emerge.

My childhood mentors were the media. ‘Just do it,’ is my favorite advice ever. Doesn’t every father tell that to their child? How about, ‘Think different’? Why would you argue with that?

Lacking parental input, who could do better? I’ve winged it, since I could walk, with little input. How do you pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you can’t wipe your own butt? Eat, sleep, and poop. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I never knew my father. Met my mother in passing. Then, snip, snip, tied off like a soggy balloon and released. Was it something I said? Still hope to find those misplaced baby pics.

Found in a dumpster? Where else? Nick of time, too. I’d about run out of screams. Swaddled in a down comforter, of course. Standard issue for dumpster babies, don’t you know?

Trust me. I have no social pretensions. Humble beginnings cure those with a bullet. In the punchbowl of life, I’m the turd floating by. Ahoy!

I look in the mirror. How do people know? What invisible façade do they detect which makes me so dismissible? I know who I am, due to inside knowledge. But how do strangers know? Is it a vacant haughtiness, unsupported by money or pedigree? Oh well. If you want genuine arrogance, you must look elsewhere. My veneer is twenty-four carat counterfeit.

You prefer anger? How about rage? I can give you rage.

How do children learn to be human? It won’t happen in a vacuum. Mothers at the park look askance at me. But I won’t bother their kids. I crave what the mothers say…. “Play nice, wipe your mouth, don’t fight… pretend.”

Where did they learn that? A machine needs oil. A bird needs flight. An apple needs a tree. But things can’t plead their case. Children won’t ask either. Mothers don’t carry a guidebook. It’s in their bones.

Attitude is everything. I could sleep soundly, under a bridge. Or poise for a high-dive from the penthouse balcony. How does anyone get to the balcony, and not jump?

I worked construction on a new house for Gillis, some advertising guy. He brought his family for a tour. Like ducklings, everyone followed Richard, the contractor. He pointed out framed-in spaces, soon to be rooms. Gillis’ kids touched everything. Their tactile sense revealed what mere sight could not.

Gillis pulled me aside. I figured I was about to get fired. I can sense it. He told me to come in, and gave me his card. He said I ‘had a look.’ Whatever that meant.

They put me in a studio with a lit backdrop and a bicycle. The photographer told me to stand by the bike. So I did. He snapped some shots. He thanked me. That was it.

What was it about? I never got the memo, ‘how to stand by a bicycle.’

I’m not asking, ‘what’s my motivation.’ Fact is, I never had a bike. And I learned early, never touch what isn’t mine. So I stood by the bike. But not in a ‘this bike and I are one,’ stance. Guess I don’t have ‘the look’ after all. Damn! Upstaged by a bicycle. I could’ve been a contender.

A house has a structural integrity. Like a body has its skeleton to keep it upright and intact.

When the house is complete, the shingles mounted, windows glazed, and the door keyed, what then? What does it need? Furniture?

Who lives there? Who belongs? What subtle chemistry bubbles and forms a family? What’s indispensable, without which, no family exists, regardless how many gather?

Trust.

I work construction. Stay in shape. Have time to think. Sleep well. With what materials does one construct trust? Day to day, hand me a hammer. Pick up food. Cash the check. But trust?

I look in the mirror – objectively handsome, but not exceedingly so. Never cared about ‘the look.’

Do I take after my mother? Or father? Who had curly hair? Who had trust?

The social workers put us in a camp. Called it ‘life skills.’ My warden, Miss Devon, assigned me garden duty. This was no Eden unless rows of rutabagas and beans float your boat.

I hoed, pulled weeds. Watered. Harvested.

Nail guns are sure. Use one, and something stays put. Staking seedlings for promised growth, makes a high odds gamble. It takes hours of patience and focus spent… hoping to pull up a carrot? Check please.

So, my real father… There must have been one. Everyone has at least a donor, right? The dumpster daddy. Is he dead? Did he give me even a second thought? Is he rich, famous, and free because he walked away from a life including me? Does he have an unfillable emptiness?

Would I want to be like him? Am I? I don’t want to know.

Were they an item? This couple who created me? Did he rape her? That’s a real man for you. Over in less time than it would take to buy a condom. She must’ve been hot.

Of course, she let me live. Very generous to deposit me in a dumpster and not drown me like a kitten. If only I had an address to send a mother’s day card. So special.

Were they ever together? Or was I the embarrassing output of a five minute clinch? I’ll never know their names. Did they bother with such formalities? So many questions.

My school years remain a fog. Teachers made me the poster boy of ‘failing up.’ Not that I’d have returned. Every summer, I relocated to a new house in a new district. Always the ‘new kid.’ Miss Devon and I set my birthday in June since that’s when I'd meet my ‘new family.’

Foster homes, a multitude, were all different, and all the same. I ate with the family, but always felt sequestered.

The last one, Mike and Sue had two kids about my age. Dean, the brother, had no desire to befriend me. His nickname for me was ‘free lunch.’ Sister Sharon, younger than Dean and me by two or three years, barely acknowledged me. Who invites a perceived threat into their home?

I awoke screaming from a nightmare. Spiders swarmed over my face. Dean pinned me down and punched. Over and over he yelled, “Shut up!”

When I became lucid, I saw Sharon watching from the hallway, standing behind Mike and Sue.

Dean said the county paid his folks to foster me. I’d never heard that, but it made sense. They didn’t fatten me up. That must have been one tight budget.

Sharon, my secret friend, slipped extra cookies to me.

Dean was odd. I had nothing. And no place to put it. But Dean accused me of stealing stuff. Curiously, when my stuff went missing, I’d find it in his desk.

Miss Devon stuck by me when I aged out, and they cut me loose. She patted my shoulder and wished me well. After years, that was it. She’s who told me about my turning blue. That was all she knew. I figured it was a dumpster. She couldn’t confirm that.

A free agent, I bounced from job to job. They’d say I had attitude problems. You think? Worse than being a foster brat. Miss Devon checked in with me every few months. Off the books. Even though I had a new worker, nothing worked for me.

Richard, the contractor, who hired me said, “I’ll be honest, Jonah. I have no great expectations about you. Miss Devon asked me to cut you a break. She’s a good one to have in your corner.”

She pulled in a favor for me. Might be my last chance.

He said, “Listen up. Here’s the deal. I’m hiring you to do whatever needs doing, when it needs doing, or sooner. Better, if you do it before hand. Don’t waste my time.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. You do that, it’ll be plenty.”

That was the most fatherly thing anyone ever told me. Clean, simple, and unambiguous.

We shook on it and he put me to work. Hours were long and hard. I learned a ton, and I proved myself. He kept me busy. For the first time in my life, I had money to spare.

Free day, coming out of a coffee shop, someone called my name. Sharon, now attending the community college, stood grinning at me.

She invited me to join her and friends at the flea market. I’d never been. Felt good to pay her way. We watched people, joked and laughed. So much used junk! We had fun. Never felt so relaxed. Her friends wandered off. She didn’t care.

One booth had a boxes of old snapshots. I don’t know why I leafed through them. Just curious.

Who were all these forgotten people? Does no one remember them? I invented stories. Sharon listened, enrapt. I rambled on.

In one faded black and white, a group stood in a field proudly holding giant rutabagas. They each wore suspenders and sun hats. I riffed that the tall, middle one was my grandfather. The others were uncles. The squat woman on the side, my second cousin.

Sharon loved it.

Another featured a man in uniform, standing by a vintage fighter plane.

“My Dad. He died in the war.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. Can’t you tell he’s a hero?” I flipped through some more. “And this woman feeding geese is my mother.”

“You have her eyes.”

“And the curly hair…”

Faded inscriptions on the back were indecipherable. No names. Lost faces.

The box advertised, ‘photos - $1 per dozen.’ Sharon said, “your pick.” My first gift ever. Instantly, I had a family. I wiped my eyes.

And I discovered something that sperm and egg created, no one could take from me.

In the food court, I bought two coffees and we split a cookie.

“Interest paid on all those snacks...”

She laughed, “Yeah, you owe me, Joe. Big time.”

A jug band did their set. Between songs I waxed fantastic about my brand new, antique photo family.

A pattern emerged. In each story, everyone did what needed doing, when needed. Some died. Some thrived. But everyone did their best.

I told Sharon, “‘Good to the last drop,’ is my favorite slogan.” She listened. “I know it’s marketing coffee, but it also seems a worthy goal for life. That’ll be my measure ‘till I drop.”

Whatever their failures, I forgave them. They did their best.