With us boys out of the house, numerous home renovations have left my parents' garage crammed with precarious stacks of boxes bulging with Kerry's and my every childhood knickknack, mounds of soccer camp t-shirts, eight years worth of Sports Illustrated issues, and everything else we've accumulated on our garbage-can eschewing journeys to Pack-Rat status. A receipt from a soda I bought in 6th grade? Gimme an hour.
My dad wants the kingly Prius to reclaim its garage domain, from which it's been ostracized at least 6 months, relegated to the driveway with the family junkers, wilting in North Carolina's summer inferno, birds defecating without mercy upon its surfaces, an ironic target since they're seemingly on the same side of the green fight. Thus, the boxes must soon find new homes, either having their contents donated or being moved to storage, and they need to bear labels identifying their owner, to avoid a scene of twenty-something brothers fist-fighting over a couple of Hot Wheels, Hardy Boys novels, and flattened Wheaties boxes. Which, if you know me and Kerry, is hardly a far-fetched scenario.
"Patrick, before you fly to Mexico City, make sure you've gone through all the boxes in the garage," began my father on the way back from dinner at Mert's, a legendary soul food outpost in uptown Charlotte.
Nearly comatose after the gluttonous coconut cake following my feast of fried chicken and catfish, cornbread, collards and candied yams, I yawned acknowledgment, "Yaaauuhhmmmm."
"And write your name on the boxes."
I mumbled again, a globule of drool encapsulating a coconut flake, a fossil from my meal, edging over my lip.
"At least pee on them."
He paused. I licked my lip and rolled my gaze from the passenger window to my chauffeur. I smiled, he started to chuckle, and my mom joined in from the back seat.
"No problem, dad," I said after a moment, reacquainting myself with words, "But maybe I'll just write a P."
Yep, one of those classic family moments.
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RIP HEAVY D
14 years ago