Nick's Birthday

Today's Nick's birthday. He's seventeen years old. After I dropped Lilly off at school today, I took the car in to be inspected (you would not believe cosmic forces arrayed against renewing my tag--all of yesterday was about trying to get my tag renewed and failing, miserably--but that's another story). The mechanic, a very blue-eyed base player, hit on me last week. I had stopped in at the station to fill up the Saab and it broke down right there. Right at the pump. I had to buy a new battery, but at least I got flirted with. So, long story short, I decided to get the car inspected there--I mean--go where you're appreciated, right?
"It'll take about 45 minutes." he told me. He had told me yesterday the car didn't need to be inspected, something which the girl at the DMV, dripping with bling set me straight on. I have never seen more rhinestones on a daytime ensemble. Earrings, fake chanel pendant, jeans, even the tips of her nails.
"The mechanic told me I didn't need to have the car inspected."
"He told you wrong--"waving a gleaming hand. "Just go back and tell him from me. I'll let you in to the front of the line. I'll remember you."
I love the Little Dixie DMV. This is the only DMV in America that's actually kind of fun to go to. I've never had a bad time there. I've never waited more than 6 minutes for help.
I went back to the garage, but they were full. So that's why I was there this morning.
So this morning I'm there in the cold with 45 minutes on my hand. Near the garage is the town cemetery, Office Depot, a Walgreen's, an Sherman elementary school (where I went to school--one of the first integrated classes--I was beaten up daily and had corn thrown at me every day at lunch), and the public library. I decided to go to the library.
My dad bought Nick this huge black down coat from a store in a mall. Nick refuses to wear it. "It's a gangsta coat, Mom," he informs me. It is. But it's warm. So I wear it. It can probably stop bullets. I walk up the hill to the library, and peek in the door. A well groomed young woman walks up who cannot be anything in life other than a librarian. She smiles. "Are you Libby? No badge yet, huh? I'll swipe you in."
I must look sort of eager and respectable. She thinks I'm a new employee. For a second, I play with the idea of pretending to be Libby for the morning. Good practical joke? Yeah....but I'm all respectable now and too many people know me. They would think I'm losing my mind.
"No...."
"Oh,--the library doesn't open til 9" she tells me pleasantly.
So I keep walking.
I decide to go to the cemetery. Every day, I try to do one weird thing. No matter how small. It keeps me engaged. And, believe it or not, other than the time I accidentally kicked a ball into the cemetery in 1st grade and had to go retrieve it (the cemetery borders the playground), I have never gone in by myself.
So I turn in down the narrow black asphalt road.
Funny how we keep our conventions, even in death. The tombstones of married people, for example--the wife's is always shorter than the husband's. Here are the names I've grown up with--the names of streets and stores and colleges. Some of the dates are heartbreaking. Farther back, the stones change, smaller, carved, names fading, dates in the 1700's--and lots of phrases like this: "born in Virginia in 1786--died here in 1850." The first people came to our town in the early 1800's from Kentucky. I look across at the empty fields--sparsely scattered with stones. The Taco Bell. The empty part was supposedly filled with slave graves. The plots are for sale now. The Taco Bell was built on the graves. It was stuck by lightening the first year it opened. We know why...
There's the stone for the 1st president of the university--and next to him is one for his son. I read the dates--1839-1859. Buried his son. Nothing in here can tell that story.
I think about Nick, 17 today. All the birthdays behind us. The childhood behind us. His childhood's in the proverbial can. Done. All the things I wanted for him.
On his first birthday, Nick and I went to the zoo. We rode an ancient, patient, sawbacked elephant. I still remember the stiff hairs on its back and it's astonishing shiplike sway as it walked in a circle. There were flamingoes, and Nick was so delighted--we had to go back again and again--he loved them best.