Gratitude in a Trailer, Down By the River

Disclaimer:  Gratitude.  Every day.  Every moment. I’m grateful for my life and the lives of those I love. I’m grateful for friends through writing, like Dorothy Johnson and her Blog “Reflections from the Ridge.”  I’m also grateful for my peculiar sense of humor that borders on sarcasm, the lowest form of humor.

Down by the river.  In a field. In a trailer that was behind the Tastee-Freeze in Married Student Housing. There I learned gratitude in a peculiar kind of way.

I’m grateful for mouse-traps.

Gratitude blossomed in a tiny trailer and came to me on little mice feet.  Not little cat feet.  Not as Carl Sandburg wrote, but as I heard.  Every night, above our double bed sandwiched between two walls and topped with a drop ceiling.  There between the roof and the ceiling they scampered, danced and pranced, sounding like a herd of steroid filled lab rats. Upon hearing the last act of what would eventually become River Dance, I decreed that husband was not to return to said domicile without traps.  I would remain encamped in the green sofa chair, feet raised, until the hero returned.

I’m grateful for green electrical tape.

We had a dog.  Duke.  As in Duke. Duke. Duke. Duke of Earl. Duke’s tail, which wagged constantly, could knock open the bathroom door and clear the coffee table with one swoop.  A growing puppy, he was ravenous, all the time. He teethed on lamp wires when he was not eating the arms off the sofa.  Which was green. I reupholstered the arms of that green sofa with matching electrical tape, and no one could ever tell the difference in green tape and green pleather that covered the luxury sofa in a trailer, in a field, in Married Student Housing.

I’m grateful, most of all, for a dose of Nyquil and The Wash House.

Illness.  Deep, dark, nameless illness.  “Here, drink some of this.” Rational thought goes out the window with high fever. Like “here, Dearie, eat this apple.” She took a bite; I drank. It was a vile, disgusting concoction of venom. Named NyQuil, it’s deep, dark green and causes black outs, if not death. Before I passed out, I mumbled something about needing to do the laundry.

In a trailer, in a field, down by the river, in Married Student Housing, there are no washer-dryer combos.

The mice-killer said, “I’ll do the laundry because I’m out of underwear. How do I do that?” In my last conscious words, I said, “Go to the Wash House.  They’ll help you.”  That’s all I remember.

After what must have been a half-day, when I came to lucid thought and it was dark outside, I heard the following words mumbled through clenched teeth with raw exasperation, “The first things we’re buying when we get a house is a washer and dryer.”

And that’s why I’m grateful for NyQuil and The Wash House in a town where I lived in Married Student Housing in a trailer in a field down by the river.