A Something Random Guide to..

Some of the best life lessons still ingrained in my head are the ones that never really involved me to begin with.

I sent my parents a card for Valentines Day.  In typical Beth Rumbel fashion, I avoided the overly sentimental Hallmark holiday “you mean the world to me, but I’m going to send you a card that a million other people also received” cards (these kinds come better home made, but I was on another arts and crafts mission at the time), and found the cut out of a pig. 

Not even a cartoon pig with a cutesy curly tail, but an overweight real life hog dressed up in a tutu with fake wings.  It opened to read “Look, its Cu-pig!”

It was perfect. 

Without getting into too many personal details, the message I wrote to my mom and pop centered on the sentence “Thank you for teaching me what great love looks like.”

I only think of this now, 10 days after the fact, because Whitney Houston came onto my iTunes party mix (why iTunes shuffled “I Will Always Love You” into the mix, I’m still not sure.  Artificial Intelligence hasn’t evolved enough yet, I suppose).  It wasn’t their wedding song.  I don’t think they even have a wedding song.  Not one that has been shared with me anyway, even though I’ve asked. 

Or maybe I’m forgetting because it was before my time.  It’s entirely possible.

I forget a lot of things.  Forgetting is my biggest (and sadly justified) fear.  But I don’t think I’ll forget the day Mom, Cojack and I came home from a doctor’s appointment.  I was in grammer school, and Cojack being younger than me was not fit to be left to fend for herself.  So she came to my doctor’s appointment too. 

Back in the days of house phone lines, actual non-cellular phone numbers, answering machines were a big deal.  Cojack and I used to race into the house to the backroom in hopes of seeing a blinking red light.

There’s a message!  There’s a message!  We would yell until we were acknowledged.  The times we weren’t acknowledged immediately, we’d run back into the kitchen and start pulling on the arms of our parents, despite the fact they were often filled with grocery bags or other items.  There’s a message!  We’d say it again, and they’d either drop the bags to come in the backroom and listen to it, or tell us to go play it in an effort to appease. 

Mom there’s a message!  Cojack and I both yelled after returning home from my immunizations.  Ok, wait a minute, I’ll be right there.  She answered as if she already knew what magic was behind the glow of the tiny flashing light.

Pop would call home everyday at 3:57 pm to say I’m leaving, I love you, as he headed out of his downtown office to catch the R2 home.  The conversation was always quick.  I’m leaving, I love you.  Mom would answer I love you too bye.  The phone would click, and we’d see Pop a little over an hour later, coming in through the garage to drop his briefcase in the fireplace room and take his seat at the dinner table. 

It was after 4 this particular afternoon, so in hindsight I think she already knew the message was from Pop.  I’m leaving, I love you.  She already knew, or that day, she thought she already knew.

We gathered around the icebox that the answering machine sat atop. Cojack had the honors of pushing the play the button.  But rather than the expected I’m leaving, I love you, we heard: 

It’s 4 o’clock.  Then a drum beat.  Then, Whitney Houston breaking out into the climatic ending of the song.

And I will always love you.  I will always love you.  I will always love you.  I will always love you (the saxophone reentered the musical score after this one).  I will always love you.  I, I will always love you. 

I remember it vividly.

I remember wondering if my dad had a hidden Whitney Houston album somewhere that he got the track off of.  I remember my mom tearing up.  I remember Cojack running away when the message was over.  And I remember thinking, before I ran to chase after her (as I always did):

Love is a message on an answering machine.

And it still is.