Cousins

In one room of a large oncology hospital

near the Victory Monument, which is where

most all the vans from the north and northeast

of the Thai countryside end up, are six beds

and eight “sois” or spaces between beds.

Soi is Thai for alleyways and on the floor of one

of these sois my wife is sleeping, keeping faith

with a cousin who is undergoing chemo and

languishing in much the same way my wife’s

father did when I got here ten years ago.

This cousin comes from my wife’s mother’s

village some hours to the north and west.

“Good God,” I asked, “doesn’t she have some

one in her village –where she’s lived all her

life – to sit with her?”  My wife doesn’t answer,

nor will she ever answer.

I like this cousin who was one of the very few

of my wife’s cousins who would look at the

situation, roll up her sleeves and start sweeping,

mopping, picking up or cooking without being

told to.  When a hundred or so weasels show

up on your lawn for a party you tend to remember

the good weasels.

My wife has shuttered her salon for three

days now and outside of sleeping at the hospital

I know she is spending money I don’t have.

When I get mad I dance like Donald Duck and

yell things unintelligible to a Thai.

“I don’t like it when you yell,” she says.  I yell:

Well, well!

She pauses and then says, “When she dies there

will be some insurance money for me.”

Money is a part of every Thai transaction:  birth,

marriage, and death.  But the Thais are

superstitious to a fault.  I once saw my wife,

 as the sun set at the Night market in Ayutthaya,

wipe all her for-sale clothes with a hundred Baht

note to bring good luck.

Home is the place where, when you have to go

there, they have to take you in, I guess.  In Thai 

families,though the truth may be closer to the dying 

can say“Red Rove, Red Rover, send my wife 

Plaupplung – whohas had more success in life 

than I – right over . . .

 

and you must obey.

FG  4/30/2015

There are 65 million of my wife’s cousins living in Thailand.  This is just one of their stories.

I’m taking some liberty with the word soi here.  Many businesses in Bangkok are located on soi 15, etc.  The Thais do have a word for aisle.

If you stay in a hospital, it is common here, maybe even required, for a family member to attend the patient.

Dogs Can’t Edit

I had been without A/C for three days.

Finally, three guys showed up to clean

my unit.  They worked for forty-five minutes

or so, charged me ten bucks and left

before the first storm arrived.  I walked

out to my wife’s beauty shop, called the

American Salon for reasons unbeknownst

to me, before the first storm hit.  I have

seen torrential down powers in NH and

even in Saudi Arabia and they get your

attention wherever they happen, but

humans can put parentheses around these

storms: they will have a beginning and an

end. But dogs cannot edit sentences like this. 

I have only one old dog now.  He is an arch

watchdog, but if anyone in the family looks

at him cross-eyed he cowers and slinks off

someplace. He is frightened to death of

thunder storms. He was just outside the

sliding glass doors of my wife’s shop, shivering

with fear. Every time there was a thunder clap

he let out a little yip. I went out and tried

to console him but when I touched him

he jumped.  So I just stood beside him

looking out at the strings of water off

the corrugated roof. It was like looking

out through those clear plastic strips

over the refrigerated dairy case.  But

God knows what the world looks like

to a scared dog who can’t edit his life

sentence.  I feel the temperature dropping.

Fear is fear.

FG April 2015 

Added "I feel the temperature dropping." to coalesce the A/C, dairy case and zero-at-the-bone dog-style.

I have a hard time editing on Blogger.  All I can do is delete and replace.