" ...this year the dogs outdid themselves on a well-timed Linux stock and used the profits to buy a treadmill...."
Sister Island, Dec 28, 1999
My father has never given me a Christmas present. Not once. My mother has and my sister used to but my father has always come up empty. Years ago the world's leaders heard of my plight and came to my rescue. Mikhail Gorbachev, up until the Berlin Wall came down and ruined his career, was always good for an ill-fitting sweater. Before he died of a cold, Yuri Andropov bought me a Go-Go's CD and Fidel Castro gives day-planners. But even death could not stop some leaders. Several anticipated my situation and, like Tommy's real mom on Eight is Enough, purchased gifts for me prior to their demise. Gandhi, whose sterling silver hoop earrings I still wear on special occasions, preferred to shop at JC Penneys. So did Winston Churchill and the King of Prussia. Ulyssys S. Grant was, to no one's surprise, a Montgomery Wards man.
My dogs also buy and wrap gifts. They love to pretend they don't know what the fuss is all about; they are modest that way. This year the dogs outdid themselves on a well-timed Linux stock and used the profit to buy a treadmill for my mother. The treadmill, my mother insisted last summer after a life threatening blood clot was removed from her leg, is all she would ever ask for, for the rest of her life. She would work out on it every day; she wants to help me take care of the grandchildren that she is certain I will change my mind about not giving her. My dad and sister and I wanted to believe her; we wanted to chip in. She's our only mom, we said, searching the web for a sub-3000 dollar machine.
The backyard at Kilmartin Manor is a tribute to the veracity of 90% of Jeff Foxworthy's act. While the couch and love seat have been scooped up by the Salvation Army, there is plenty of rusted furniture for our neighbors to blanche at. To the right, if you'll step over a balding slab of carpet that used to be in my bedroom, is the exercise section. A Health Rider draped with dirty towels sits next a rotting Nordic Track. The padded, baby blue headstand assister supports two molding dumbells. In the foreground, kitty korner from a pail of last year's rain water, is the pull up bar and behind that, the benchpress. Please do not touch the equipment without first receiving a tetanus shot and signing this waiver. (The stair stepper is still indoors because if it wasn't, one would have to hang jackets and coats in the closet).
Ah, I see you've spotted the jewel of the Day Spa, the swimming pool. Once fit for activity, the pool's water has suffered from exposure to the elements and a rise in the price of chlorine. It is now jet black from neglect. Fans of Sunset Boulevard expect to find William Holden floating face down in it. The motorized pool cover, which stopped midway years ago during a routine close, now hosts a garden in its sunken center. Named after our black labrador,
Sister Island grows wider each week and draws fantastic birds and wildlife from the local wetlands. My sister Eileen says Princess Diana is buried there.
Please, have a seat on the hand-me-down lawn chair. (Our family has always relied on the kindness of friends who upgrade). Let's see if we can coax the dogs out of their plywood and spider web cottage. Come Maddie, come Sister! Oh darn, it looks like they're making a beeline for the Nordic Track. Truely, there is nothing like a good chew on a wooden ski to warm one's mouth up for the spongy Health Rider seat. Let's take a peek, shall we, at the cottage's charming decor. The name of its former resident, Pepsi, has been crossed out with an elegant cantaloupe-colored spray. A spotlight hooked up by the dogs' master shines throughout the winter, providing them with heat and the ability to read at night.
Lady Kilmartin, on Christmas morning, took great delight in her new gift and rewarded the dogs by letting one of them sit on the indoor couch for ten minutes before noticing and screaming, "Maddie, off, off, god damnit who's going to clean off this hair?" The treadmill was plopped happily in the family room and the Nordic Track and the Health Rider, looking in from the window, felt like an old dog named Pepsi, whose name had been scratched off when she was replaced by the new dogs, who themselves began to scout the rubber treading for places to chew once it made its way to its ultimate destination, the concrete coast of Sister Island.
