Going to the movies

The last time my mother saw her father, she was six years old, waiting in front of a movie theater in Des Moines, Iowa.  It was 1918. A neighbor had taken her to see a film. 

Joe Farley, recently divorced, was standing in line ahead of them. He ignored them until the neighbor tapped him on the shoulder.  She said, “Damn it, Joe, say hello to your daughter.”

“Hello, Margaret, ” he said. 

At six Margaret began to suspect, like Zhuangzi, that life goes better if you do not force things. But she didn’t fully grasp what this entailed until she reached the edge of old age. 

While I was in college at UCLA, Joe Farley came to California to visit relatives. I asked my mother if she  planned to look him up during his visit. 

“No,” she said.  “If the son-of-a-bitch wants to meet me, he knows where I live.”