Rachel Out in the Country

This past weekend I visited Rachel at her parents house near Gig Harbor. They are somewhere in the country between Gig Harbor and Tacoma. I don't know - all I know is that there is no cell phone reception for miles around, and it is an hour from Seattle.

It was quite an uneventful weekend. Rachel does not do much of anything there, apparently, although to her credit there did not appear anything to do. It is Rachel, her mother, father, and nephew Tyler - her younger sister's 2 1/2 year-old son. Oddly, her parents did not seem to mind one bit that I was there. They were completely neutral. Not very interested, but not in the least resentful or annoyed. They were not inhospitable, but not gracious at my presence. Apathetic, rather. A little odd, I thought.

Her mother is around 50, a bit wrinkly and pale from sitting inside, chain-smoking cheap Bronco cigarettes all day. Father, whose name I didn't catch, was supremely the quiet-type. A thin, balding, blondish man with glasses and a mustache. Stoic. He said perhaps 10 or 20 sentences the entire two days.

Saturday night he requested Rachel and I come out to the fire pit, where he was stoking firewood with a sharpened pool stick. We sat with him for half-an-hour, virtually wordless. I was going to start some conversation, but I was curious to see if - as I was guessing was the case - either of them would speak, as Rachel is fairly quiet herself. So I held my tongue, and there we sat, staring at the fire.

After Rachel got up and went inside, to read her V.C. Andrews book, her father spoke up a bit. He explained that he grew up in a small German settlement in Texas called Bolvell or something like that, and that there is a sister-city by the same name in Germany. Rachel's mother is German; born in Germany; and they met while he was stationed there, in the military. I flipped through a scrapbook of their wedding, and of Rachel and her sister as young children: apparently a contented young family. They were not unhappy now, there was just the feeling of burden and apathy at, obviously, Rachel's and her sister's troubles.

I considered that 2 1/2 year-old blonde, blue-eyed Tyler was a gift of sorts for Rachel's mom, as she doesn't work and would be stuck out there alone all day if it weren't for him. Apparently the father lives nearby, but rarely comes to see his son. If her opinion of it weren't clear enough, Rachel's mother has trained Tyler to explain his parents to those who might wonder:

"Mama's in the clinker, dada's a loser."

That was a bit shocking to me when I heard him say it. Hilarious though, to hear from the lips of a toddler!
Rachel's sister is supposedly in jail in Texas somewhere. It's quite a sad case. She is younger - 21 or so.

Tyler is quite a rambunctious guy. Rachel's mother had him in the car seat when she picked us up from the bus stop. Both she and Rachel then proceeded to smoke with the windows only cracked, the whole way back to their house. They both smoke inside, too - chain smoke - with Tyler and Rachel's non-smoker dad, too. Rather inconsiderate, I thought. If ever there would be a case of secondhand smoke causing a health problem, I should think this would be it.

I left with dad at 5 Monday morning, as he began his long commute to Tukwila for work at the federal Department of Homeland Security. He was mum in the car, too, even as I questioned him a bit about his job. It seemed quite interesting. I couldn't get much out of him. Rachel had told me that he worked in Immigration matters, and was formerly an Immigration agent for the Justice Department.

He dropped me off in Tacoma at dawn and I boarded the Sound Transit bus for the hour trip back to Seattle.