“I’m the only broke Jew I know.” My hands grabbing more dirty dishes from the dining room table.
Geri adds, “Yeah, I married a Jew, and got the only one without any money.”
Our gang of friends seated around the dining room table laugh at the joke. The parties are usually at our house, a three story glass and deck beach house, whose space, and personality makes it the perfect host. It’s the house and my profession as a pilot, that have our buddies believing that we have money.
As I scrub the dishes and plates, a pile of dirties still waiting their turn next to me at the sink, I think about “the joke.” Only Geri and I know the truth, the joke’s on us. We don’t have a dime set aside, we live paycheck to paycheck, and forced retirement is less than three years away.
I am juggling while walking a tightrope, Philippe Petit without a net, high over the financial chasms of ruin. To keep our personal and family life whole, I need to stay home as much as possible. Earning only minimum guarantee. We can’t pay our bills on minimum guarantee, so I have to sacrifice our home life to fly extra trips to make the bill payments.
Always juggling bills that need paying, versus time home as husband and father, I place one foot carefully in front of the other on the unstable wire.
But even our tightrope ends in less than three years. Washing and stacking more dishes and glasses, watching the pile of dirties grow next to my right elbow, I hear the party, the music and laughter, raging around me.
What the fuck am I going to do three years from now? My first and second mortgages combined are $2000 a month. It costs us $4000 total a month to live.
All my flying buddies are now turning forty. Entering their peak earning period, they have twenty career years left to accumulate wealth, to build up retirement accounts. I’m fifty-eight (and 1/2) years old, only one and 1/2 years left, until the age sixty mandatory retirement rule kicks my butt.
I’m chained to the oars now, having volunteered to row on the slave ship too late in life.
“Stevie, this is a great party, again!” Stella chimes, leaving more dirty glasses and dishes on the counter.
“It never ends,” I think. “Anybody need another Marguerita?” I ask, rejoining the group of smokers and tokers on the deck.
Watching Clint, his brother Mike, and Sheila sharing a joint, I bitch, “I can’t believe I had to give up drugs for my lousy profession, ain’t fuckin’ worth it!”
Sheila laughs, coughing and choking on the smoke she’s trying to hold in. Clint throws out the proverbial pothead adage, “You don’t cough, you don’t get off.”
Next day, I’m prioritizing bills to pay now. Piles of stuff, junk, intermingled with what might be important, litter my desk, waiting to be deciphered. I’ve been home for a week, and I’m moody now, melting down. I’m getting ready to leave for the Hajj. I’ll be gone for the better part of three months. Geri and I are arguing over petty shit. My lousy disposition leaks out, causing me to bark at both Geri and Kiley. I bark, I apologize, I bark, I apologize. Poor Geri’s trying not to react to my mood, we both know the symptoms and the cause.
“Kiley, I’m sorry honey, I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. I was wrong.” This in the spare room, Kiley watching a Lucy rerun on Nick at Nite.
Kiley hugs me, holding me close she says, “That’s all right Dad, I love you.”
“I love you too, Sweety, I’m sorry.”
Leaving home is becoming harder and harder for me to do. Being home, an actual member of the family, feels so comfortable, so good, that the pain of impending separation is searing my soul.
“I hate this shit!” I tell Kaput, the black kitten napping on an office chair next to me. Kaput has no advice for me.