Requiem for Serenity

Once upon a time, boys and girls, there was a family. It was a perfectly nice family; husband, wife, teenage son - but this was a family with a peculiarity. This family had a dream of a desert retreat, all their own. A place where they could go to ride out any severe difficulties that might beset them and their contemporaries in the city where they lived: A place where they might retire one day, to live in the quiet of the desert.

Now, having this dream is not in itself such a very peculiar thing. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if half the cubicle rats in the business world have a very similar dream. What made this family so peculiar is that they acted on their dream. The dream became a plan, and the plan became...well, forgive me. I may not speak its name in front of strangers. Let's just say they made their dream a reality.

The beginnings of their work, as such beginnings always are unless you're rich, were quite humble. They acquired a parcel of unremarkable desert land. Looking at it as it was then, unimproved, I've often imagined that they must have experienced quite a "WTF are we doing?" moment. You can't live out here, not for any real length of time. Not without putting in a hell of a lot of work and treasure beforehand. But they were determined to do just that.

If they were going to put in the work, it would be one weekend at a time and they'd need a place to shelter while they were doing it. So they bought a travel trailer; not a great large shiny thing, for that would take money best spent elsewhere. No, it was a tiny thing, and old. You've seen them, listing to starboard in somebody's back yard, clearly reluctant to ever roll again. You've seen them, and your eyes skipped right over them for they were nothing to look at at all. That was what they bought, and that was what they transferred to their property. Piece of junk, really. But it was a start, the very first structure to rise on what became...the place whose name I will not speak.

I'm pretty sure it was the lady who named the trailer Serenity. I may never know her exact reasoning behind that, but it isn't hard to figure out in general. She is, or was back then at least, a huge Firefly fan. Huge, and quite an evangelist on the subject. She's probably directly responsible for more sales of the DVD box set than Joss Whedon. She certainly was among our group, none of whom ever met Joss Whedon. Either way, Serenity was its name.

And there it sat, moldering slowly on its jackstands long after other, grander structures rose all around it. It served various purposes after its primary mission was complete, and there was all sorts of talk about what we should do with it when it finally had to go. I even spoke of buying for myself, but...well, it was too small, and really was a piece of junk. Everybody knew that sooner or later we'd haul it off to some ignominious fate. Nobody seemed in a big hurry.

Then a couple of months ago my landlady came for her regular visit, and declared that it was time. She began pulling out bits of useful stuff we could use elsewhere; the stove, the fridge, this and that. It became my job to administer the coup de grace. I put off the job for quite a while; for me it had always been a part of the landscape, and I really didn't want to be the one to tow it to the junkyard where it belonged.

But yesterday was the day. I aired up the tires, pulled out the jackstands and coupled Serenity to the landlady's Jeep. There's a very steep hill not far away, and since I wasn't entirely sure we were going to make it up that hill a neighbor stood by at the top with a tow strap, just in case we needed more horsepower. But Serenity gave no trouble; up the hill we went and the little trailer left the property forever.

I walked out this morning and stared at the spot where she had been. Once I get it cleaned up, I can't deny it really will be an improvement. But right now there's a hole in the world, where Serenity lived.



Farewell.