City girl life sur facebook12/25/2023 Still, every enlightened choice (composting, heat pumps, an E-Bike) granted them just enough moral currency to breathe another day.Īfter they received a “Deep Retrofit” loan with absurdly low interest rates, someone from the city whom Geffen occasionally played tennis with on Saturday mornings put them in touch with a green contracting firm run by a very handsome, very smooth-talking Brazilian man named João. And yet they could not empty that slopbucket of guilt they both felt for trying so hard to bring a child into a doomed world. They had tried to shrink their carbon and psychic footprints through well-researched methods. Geffen and Lila had gotten a good deal on their building, which was in a brownfield opportunity area now being transformed into an “eco-district.” Like many, they had become increasingly climate panicky. The city had recently passed a “Green New Deal.” There was now a bike lane in the downtown that no one used and three decent coffee shops where you could order locally roasted espresso. The new mayor, who had a master’s degree in environmental science, believed in a just transition. Now it was filled with contaminated vacant lots and had one of the country’s highest overdose rates.īut things were beginning to turn around. The city had once been an industrial powerhouse where they had fabricated 70% of the world’s cast iron stoves. Or at least this is how they described their home to friends from out of town. The small city where Geffen and Lila had moved five years ago was up and coming. “It’s the future, papai,” said Geffen, gently, like a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis. His father slapped the wall and shook his head. “It’s one of the most advanced materials in the world,” said Geffen. One time Geffen came up the stairs and found his father pressing his ears against the wall. His father had never once been impressed by a building that he himself had not worked on. Yet Geffen could not help noticing that familiar look of disapproval at the construction of his quarters. Mimo seemed generally grateful for all of their efforts. Mimo smiled when he saw them and tried to build a house but his fingers shook and the blocks clattered across the floor. Geffen brought out some of his childhood blocks from Portugal which he kept in an old fruit box. Mimo would tap his gnarled hands on the table and hum along to the salty warble of a fado melody. It was one of those fancy digital ones that was made to look like an old fashioned 1950’s radio and Geffen programmed some stations from Porto so his father could feel at home. Geffen set up a little radio for Mimo in the room on the third floor. He had designed the systems in the house so that they could live a life of carbon neutrality. They were both architects, though Geffen no longer practiced. There were ways to know, of course, but Lila was the type who liked to cushion her dread with certain known unknowns. “We don’t know if it’s a girl, papai,” said Geffen. “What’re you talking about?” said Geffen. He said that he wanted to live long enough to meet his grandchild. Mimo, who spoke little English, began to cry. They eventually told Mimo that he would be a grandfather. The doctor would not have to go in to scrape her uterine wall clean. But after four months the miracle began to soften against the sandpaper of reality. At first, Lila remained terrified to even acknowledge the gestation in case there was another catastrophic ultrasound or those 3am exorcism spasms that confirmed what she already knew. No: it was definitely for the best.Įverything always happens at once. At a certain point, Lila and Geffen had resigned themselves to a path that would not include children. They had learned terms like “ovarian hyperstimulation,” “trigger shot,” and “blighted ovum.” There had been three miscarriages. They had entered the surreal world of IVF. Days after Mimo moved in, Lila found out she was pregnant. It was not a bad place to die.Įverything always happens at once. There was a view of the river and en-suite facilities. So it was a very reasonable proposition, Geffen argued, that his father should not live alone in Portugal but rather come to upstate New York and spend the rest of his days tottering around the new room on the third floor. Geffen’s mother had passed just over a year ago from colon cancer and it was clear Mimo could no longer take care of himself. But now his fingers had frozen shut and his left eye had filmed over. Geffen’s father, Mimo, had once been a master stonemason in Porto-his specialty was chiseling gargoyles into various states of fury. But Geffen, in that maddening way of his, left the possibility open for discussion long enough that her ongoing dissent began to feel like a kind of violence. It must be said from the outset that Lila disagreed with the whole idea of Geffen’s father coming to live with them.
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