TIME TO HIT THE ROAD

I am departing for Austin on the Greyhound. I will be in the capital for a week visiting number two son Joaquin and Tony Gray. After a week of festive but lazy living, I will fly to Sacramento. My stay is indeterminate except for the deadline of August 15 when I commence my 39th season in the BISD. I batted .345 last year with 43 home runs and 125 RBIs. I hit third in the lineup. Maybe I'll skip the entire first week of school and have Dr. Polyphemous Pangloss forward an excuse that I was suffering from a urinary track infection. I can coordinate The McHale Report from Mars. It's a loosey goosey operation.

My mother is 86. If there were a beauty contest for women over 85, I'm sure she would win. I would put money on her in the over 80 category, too. If she reads this, she will be insulted that I didn't give her the favorite status in the over 65 category.

She is a magnificent person and I have to spend time with her. Time is growing short for all of us. I've been in Brownsville for more than 40 years and with the passage of the decades I know more dead people than live ones these days. Mom said it best: "When you hear that I have died, it's not because I wanted to."

The spirit of my father--five years in the grave--will hover over their home. I will sit in his chair, read his books and listen to my mother cry softly. The Brazilians say that happiness is brief, but sadness lasts forever. As you age you feel sadness replacing the marrow in your bones. There are too many deaths and lost loves to be optimistic.

I am not surrendering although I feel like the con who can't handle freedom upon his release and commits a crime in order to return to prison. There is comfort in a modest, mundane routine. But I am fighting that temptation. I have my health and money. I am also the oldest of eight and my siblings and their children and the fourth generation are doing well. They will greet me with hugs and kisses and treat me like a prince. They will be disappointed that Michael will not be at my side, but divorces have dolorous consequences.

Am I going home to say good-bye? I don't plan any more extended stays unless I have no other place to die. I don't want to die in Brownsville. There has to be a locale that will liberate me in the late fall of my life. I've been fantasizing about Florianoplis, Brazil and Coimbra, Portugal.

I was eating lunch at Brownsville's only Thai restaurant and the owner informed me I could live comfortably in that country for $1000 monthly, but I've been studying Portuguese and I require the cultural excitement of a Brazil or a Portugal. I want to live in a modern city where I can eat and drink well while establishing relationships with middle-class, educated individuals like myself. And always speaking a foreign language. That is a daily infatuation. Ordering breakfast is an adventure and the day is only beginning. Your brain stays sharp as you fumble for the right words in the quixotic quest to sound articulate.

Whenever I embark on a sojourn that includes a long absence, I turn melancholy. I don't sleep. Strange dreams haunt my nights. Already inhabiting a nebulous state, I feel more bewildered. I have lost much of my foundation in recent years. I'm floating. Maybe I fear that I'm going to suffer a lonely exit.

Is that the fate that befalls retirees who have worked their entire existences and without a raison d'etre become rootless? They die shortly thereafter because they have withered away. I don't think I would find much satisfaction in caring for grandchildren.

I should shoot for 50 years in the BISD and content myself with short excursions throughout the world. Perhaps in France I'll meet a wonderful woman with the prospects of employment that require an English speaker with writing skills. I'll find a position as a teacher and a parttime gig as a bartender in Paris. Is there any way we can rediscovered that joie de vivre of our youth or are we condemned to a daily despondency by the dark knowledge of the future? Can enough bottles of wine and pretty faces alter reality?

Over the next few months I may drift off on tangents that make little sense but are hopefully well-written with an intriguing anecdote or two. Without a doubt, I am exhausted by the politics of our impoverished, ignorant and corrupt Third-World City. Then again, when Congress can't limit the use of militaristic weapons after scores are murdered in cold blood, how can we expect the benighted men and women of Brownsville to possess the capacity to do the right thing by our community?

There are rainbow trout swimming joyfully in bracing mountain streams and there are our carp feeding at the bottom of polluted resacas. It's obvious that I need a change of scenery. Adios!