I rang, but you were not there, so I walked. Before I knew it, I settled into an easy cadence: left, left, left right left. The 5 count step I've known for years now.
The cadence was natural. It echoed effortlessly in back of my thoughts, ordering them, keeping them as short and simple as the sound of my feet on the sidewalk. 1, 2, 1 2 3. Trees, sky, green wet grass. Kids, bikes, happy young shouts.
When I walk that way, I feel like I can go on forever. My mind shies away from setting a destination--do not pass--or thinking how far I have left to go--you're always going home. I ache for the tunneled backroads of my old home, silent trees pressing in on both sides, faded yellow stripe. They gave the illusion that escape was at least possible. Here, among the identical houses and manicured lawns, I don't even try to pretend I can get away. I just count cadence.
Left
left
left right left
I pass over drain covers (Russco--cruel joke) and through puddles, my feet slapping solidly against the wet ground. 1, 2, 3 4 your left. The frown is between my eyes again, my brow drawn low. Brooding, it would seem. But the cadence keeps me from dwelling, keeps me moving straight ahead. I turn the plastic rectangle in my hand off so its silence doesn't bother me so.
Somewhere around halfway through my aimless walk, I realize that the steady cadence is a trick to keep me from thinking too hard. To wonder what I'm hiding from runs me up against a steel wall in my head, my own mind pushing back my probing conscience.
So this is denial.
I pass the street she always stopped at--left--the spot we saw a hot air balloon--left--the gazebo I cried in--left right--the gorged and rushing creek--left.
And I wonder if this looks more like sanity or insanity, dementia or control.
Still I count cadence. Still I walk forward.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
It's not retreat, it's walking away.
We are here again, and this time, it's dark. That awful wind tears and claws at my skin and clothes, invisible whips lashing us mercilessly. Overhead, the moon is sickly and thin, but it casts an unnatural light, pallid and stark. There are no stars. The sky is the color of blackest charcoal ink, the eerie moonlight my only illumination.
The surface we stand on is solid shale, slate-blue and unyielding. The precipice hangs suspended over a yawning canyon, as dark as the sky overhead. There is no returning from a drop so final. Your heels are only an arm's length away from the edge, your back to the gaping abyss. The wind shrieks and howls, furious at everything and nothing.
Your eyes are lifeless. You do not look at me, but through me, as if I do not exist. Your face is blank, not written with anger, sadness, sobriety, or anything else at all. It is the face of a dead man.
And I'm screaming I'm yelling I'm shouting at you, waving my arms and shaking my fists and contorting my face, rooted firmly to the spot but aching to move anyway and shaking from the strain of holding still. The wind, the angry, hate-filled wind, snatches the words from my mouth as soon as they're formed, scattering them everywhere to rest in pieces at the bottom of the trench you balance so precariously on. My words fall like so many useless matches, meant to ignite an argument or a discussion or anything, but burned out before they even get going. They fall as if they mean nothing, for, truly, they do. You do not hear.
My anger gives way to a sadness so deep and complete that I don't know what to call it, much less where it came from or what I should do. I cannot bear this, not anymore. I bury my head in burning hands as my shoulders shake, and I am lost. You're still unmoving, though I am gone for many long moments. I mourn the past, the present, and what I now know cannot be. I mourn the future I can't have and all the effort I spent trying to reach it. I mourn you, even though you're a yard away. The wind buffets my immobile body. The moon looks on in cold disregard. And still, you look through me.
When I finally look up again, it is to see that you haven't changed, and now, at last, resolve hardens within me. I say your name a final time, and now you're moving. A single step back.
We lock eyes in the final instant, and in that split second, I think I see a flicker of something--remorse? anger? relief? guilt?--but then you are gone, disappeared, swallowed by the gaping maw of the abyss.
The wind suddenly halts, the newfound silence complete, broken only by the sound of footsteps as I leave the jagged point and unsettling night behind.
The surface we stand on is solid shale, slate-blue and unyielding. The precipice hangs suspended over a yawning canyon, as dark as the sky overhead. There is no returning from a drop so final. Your heels are only an arm's length away from the edge, your back to the gaping abyss. The wind shrieks and howls, furious at everything and nothing.
Your eyes are lifeless. You do not look at me, but through me, as if I do not exist. Your face is blank, not written with anger, sadness, sobriety, or anything else at all. It is the face of a dead man.
And I'm screaming I'm yelling I'm shouting at you, waving my arms and shaking my fists and contorting my face, rooted firmly to the spot but aching to move anyway and shaking from the strain of holding still. The wind, the angry, hate-filled wind, snatches the words from my mouth as soon as they're formed, scattering them everywhere to rest in pieces at the bottom of the trench you balance so precariously on. My words fall like so many useless matches, meant to ignite an argument or a discussion or anything, but burned out before they even get going. They fall as if they mean nothing, for, truly, they do. You do not hear.
My anger gives way to a sadness so deep and complete that I don't know what to call it, much less where it came from or what I should do. I cannot bear this, not anymore. I bury my head in burning hands as my shoulders shake, and I am lost. You're still unmoving, though I am gone for many long moments. I mourn the past, the present, and what I now know cannot be. I mourn the future I can't have and all the effort I spent trying to reach it. I mourn you, even though you're a yard away. The wind buffets my immobile body. The moon looks on in cold disregard. And still, you look through me.
When I finally look up again, it is to see that you haven't changed, and now, at last, resolve hardens within me. I say your name a final time, and now you're moving. A single step back.
We lock eyes in the final instant, and in that split second, I think I see a flicker of something--remorse? anger? relief? guilt?--but then you are gone, disappeared, swallowed by the gaping maw of the abyss.
The wind suddenly halts, the newfound silence complete, broken only by the sound of footsteps as I leave the jagged point and unsettling night behind.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Stolen Memory
I have this picture that I found a few weeks ago that feels important to me, even though it doesn't have anybody I know in it, even though I had never seen it before I set eyes on it under the humming florescent lights of a Wal-Mart in Lisbon, Connecticut. I wasn't even alive when it was taken.
It's a clumsy, all-American Christmas shot in black and white, three little girls and their teenage brother next to a squat, heavily tinseled tree. The boy is the only one not looking at the camera, his head tilted at an angle, his eyes not fully open. Judging by the half a smirk on his face, he wasn't completely ready for the shot. He looks awkwardly sincere in his plaid button down and crew cut. The martyred expression on his face is one I've seen a thousand other times in a thousand other family shots, almost always worn by the oldest child. I wonder whether he was exasperated by his parent's insistent behests--"Put your arm around your sister, there we go. Now smile and say 'Merry Christmas!'" I can almost hear them in the background, timeless.
Right below him is the smallest of the sisters, her face split by a huge grin and her brown hair in a bob. She holds a baby doll in her lap, maybe her first present of the morning, maybe her treasured companion. She looks like she could be someone's kid cousin; that innocent cuteness and infectious smile.
In the middle is the oldest of the sisters, but she looks the least like the others. The lower half of her face is obscured by a small doll, only the slightest corner of her Mona Lisa smile showing. She's pale in the eye of the camera, and her hair looks like it could have been light brown or dark blond. She's wearing some sort of shawl over her head, white to match her simple dress. She fits and yet doesn't fit in the picture, different from the others but still part of the family.
And finally, the 4th sibling half kneels to the right, her mouth puckered as if in speech and a Ponytail Sewing Kit held out proudly in front of her. She is my favorite part of the photo. Her eyes are alive and excited, her pose as if she's about to jump up and show Mommy--look! look!--her new sewing kit. She looks like the pictures of my mom I've seen from when she was younger. Maybe that's why I was drawn to this snapshot.
Or maybe it was its crinkled, soft edges and uneven cut, or the fact that all four family members sit off-center, slightly to the left of the frame. Maybe it was the faded 1960 penciled on the back, without any other names or a place or a date. No "Mark, Suzie, Karen, and Joy, Columbus, OH." Just 1960. The carpet they kneel on attests to this date.
Maybe it was just impulse that led me to pick it up in the first place, but the harder I looked at it, the more I loved this picture. It recalls countless Christmases I've experienced from more than one angle. I was once the little girl holding my favorite present out like a trophy, satisfied and triumphant. I was once the littlest person there, bottomless glee overtaking me just at the sight of the colored packages under the tree. And now I look on in an amused way as my brothers (really only Will anymore) tear through their presents, intent on opening the biggest first, then the smallest.
Over it all--the nostalgia, the curiosity--was an overwhelming sense that I had just gotten a glimpse into the past lives of these people; people who, in all likelihood, I would never meet or see as they are now. People who had gone on to grow up and get married and have children, to fulfill their dreams and meet their own failures. But I would and will never know.
And so I slid the picture from its place in the Lost and Found Photos album and into my pocket. Maybe I should have felt guilty, but instead I just felt pensive, like something greater than me had just brushed past and I missed it.
It's a clumsy, all-American Christmas shot in black and white, three little girls and their teenage brother next to a squat, heavily tinseled tree. The boy is the only one not looking at the camera, his head tilted at an angle, his eyes not fully open. Judging by the half a smirk on his face, he wasn't completely ready for the shot. He looks awkwardly sincere in his plaid button down and crew cut. The martyred expression on his face is one I've seen a thousand other times in a thousand other family shots, almost always worn by the oldest child. I wonder whether he was exasperated by his parent's insistent behests--"Put your arm around your sister, there we go. Now smile and say 'Merry Christmas!'" I can almost hear them in the background, timeless.
Right below him is the smallest of the sisters, her face split by a huge grin and her brown hair in a bob. She holds a baby doll in her lap, maybe her first present of the morning, maybe her treasured companion. She looks like she could be someone's kid cousin; that innocent cuteness and infectious smile.
In the middle is the oldest of the sisters, but she looks the least like the others. The lower half of her face is obscured by a small doll, only the slightest corner of her Mona Lisa smile showing. She's pale in the eye of the camera, and her hair looks like it could have been light brown or dark blond. She's wearing some sort of shawl over her head, white to match her simple dress. She fits and yet doesn't fit in the picture, different from the others but still part of the family.
And finally, the 4th sibling half kneels to the right, her mouth puckered as if in speech and a Ponytail Sewing Kit held out proudly in front of her. She is my favorite part of the photo. Her eyes are alive and excited, her pose as if she's about to jump up and show Mommy--look! look!--her new sewing kit. She looks like the pictures of my mom I've seen from when she was younger. Maybe that's why I was drawn to this snapshot.
Or maybe it was its crinkled, soft edges and uneven cut, or the fact that all four family members sit off-center, slightly to the left of the frame. Maybe it was the faded 1960 penciled on the back, without any other names or a place or a date. No "Mark, Suzie, Karen, and Joy, Columbus, OH." Just 1960. The carpet they kneel on attests to this date.
Maybe it was just impulse that led me to pick it up in the first place, but the harder I looked at it, the more I loved this picture. It recalls countless Christmases I've experienced from more than one angle. I was once the little girl holding my favorite present out like a trophy, satisfied and triumphant. I was once the littlest person there, bottomless glee overtaking me just at the sight of the colored packages under the tree. And now I look on in an amused way as my brothers (really only Will anymore) tear through their presents, intent on opening the biggest first, then the smallest.
Over it all--the nostalgia, the curiosity--was an overwhelming sense that I had just gotten a glimpse into the past lives of these people; people who, in all likelihood, I would never meet or see as they are now. People who had gone on to grow up and get married and have children, to fulfill their dreams and meet their own failures. But I would and will never know.
And so I slid the picture from its place in the Lost and Found Photos album and into my pocket. Maybe I should have felt guilty, but instead I just felt pensive, like something greater than me had just brushed past and I missed it.
In Memoriam
If you follow me on Facebook, you may have read this already, but I wanted to post it here just so it's easier to find next time.
----------
You are there, but you aren't. "There" is no longer where it used to be.
The woods are quiet, only the sound of birds and the wind accompanying you. The light is grey, dank and cool, leaching the greens out of the foliage around you until the color doesn't seem real. None of this does.
We stood there, in that clearing that wasn't always a clearing, and we were lost. Lost on soil that used to be more familiar than anything else. Lost on our own damn turf.
Nature defies your wishes, scorns your attempts to keep it down and defeat its inexorable will. It had boldly reclaimed the land I once delcared mine, ferns growing where before only dead leaves had lain, saplings standing bravely in what used to be the highway of my forest. The old outlines had blurred until I couldn't place them anymore, and you led me, just as you occasionally had before. But this time, we were both guessing. You were just a better guesser than me.
When you stand in a place like that, where the old is new, the memorized forgotten, and the certainty has crumbled to hesitancy, you are forced to face that time moves on, even if you try not to. The what ifs return with a vengeance. They tease you with ideal scenarios that can never be. You are here, and cannot possibly change the past now. I could not have saved this, no more than I could have predicted the fact I'd be here in the first place. It is a painful release to come to terms with that. A part of you mourns and reminisces.
And in the silence, we locked eyes. "It's sad," I said. A helpless gesture out at the wet green, at the trees that had moved and the soggy earth that hadn't. "All of this." It was a futile attempt to sum up 3 years' worth of change, both physical and otherwise.
A tacit nod, a gentle hug. You knew my pain. This had been ours, of course. We both missed how things used to be. We both missed the lazy summers, the shared snow days, the ease of seeing each other. We both loved that big blue house and these tangled, endless woods.
You leave with a double image imprinted in your mind: the place you knew--lighter, earthier, familiar and friendly--and the place you see: wild, neglected, natural and changed. They seem so different that it's hard to imagine they're even the same place. And it's closure, in a way. A final stamp that says you are not unwelcome, but you no longer truly belong. Life has moved on here without you, churning, relentless. You are wanted elsewhere now. It's an unsettling realization.
The quiet after you are gone is peaceful. Timeless. It, at least, has always sounded the same.
In the darkening evening, another tree gives into old age and rot and rumbles to the ground.
----------
You are there, but you aren't. "There" is no longer where it used to be.
The woods are quiet, only the sound of birds and the wind accompanying you. The light is grey, dank and cool, leaching the greens out of the foliage around you until the color doesn't seem real. None of this does.
We stood there, in that clearing that wasn't always a clearing, and we were lost. Lost on soil that used to be more familiar than anything else. Lost on our own damn turf.
Nature defies your wishes, scorns your attempts to keep it down and defeat its inexorable will. It had boldly reclaimed the land I once delcared mine, ferns growing where before only dead leaves had lain, saplings standing bravely in what used to be the highway of my forest. The old outlines had blurred until I couldn't place them anymore, and you led me, just as you occasionally had before. But this time, we were both guessing. You were just a better guesser than me.
When you stand in a place like that, where the old is new, the memorized forgotten, and the certainty has crumbled to hesitancy, you are forced to face that time moves on, even if you try not to. The what ifs return with a vengeance. They tease you with ideal scenarios that can never be. You are here, and cannot possibly change the past now. I could not have saved this, no more than I could have predicted the fact I'd be here in the first place. It is a painful release to come to terms with that. A part of you mourns and reminisces.
And in the silence, we locked eyes. "It's sad," I said. A helpless gesture out at the wet green, at the trees that had moved and the soggy earth that hadn't. "All of this." It was a futile attempt to sum up 3 years' worth of change, both physical and otherwise.
A tacit nod, a gentle hug. You knew my pain. This had been ours, of course. We both missed how things used to be. We both missed the lazy summers, the shared snow days, the ease of seeing each other. We both loved that big blue house and these tangled, endless woods.
You leave with a double image imprinted in your mind: the place you knew--lighter, earthier, familiar and friendly--and the place you see: wild, neglected, natural and changed. They seem so different that it's hard to imagine they're even the same place. And it's closure, in a way. A final stamp that says you are not unwelcome, but you no longer truly belong. Life has moved on here without you, churning, relentless. You are wanted elsewhere now. It's an unsettling realization.
The quiet after you are gone is peaceful. Timeless. It, at least, has always sounded the same.
In the darkening evening, another tree gives into old age and rot and rumbles to the ground.
Toss it away into the fire.
What we're left with are memories.
My earliest memories are disjointed, jumping from place to place and person to person. They make it seem like I grew up in fits and starts, jerking from 2 years to 4 years to 5 to 7 to 9. The earliest one I have is of a plane--is it any wonder, then, that I love them so much now? I was standing at the window, looking at the clouds quietly. I couldn't have been older than 2 or 3.
Another favorite of mine was one of the first days I spent in Connecticut. It was summer, the sky a brilliant, endless blue punctuated with lazy white clouds. The soccer field back then was near the elementary school, once that has since been leveled to make way for a newer, bigger elementary school. I stood there awkwardly, too proud to hide behind my mom, but too nervous to walk out by myself and meet the other girls and boys. Lucky for me, I didn't have to worry. The best friend I've ever had charged right up to me, short, freckled, fiery. "Are you new here?" For an 8 year old, she seemed to possess an awful lot of authority. I nodded timidly.
And then she said the five words that made all the difference in the world to me: "Wanna be my soccer buddy?" Samm and I have been inseparable ever since.
The moment that everything changed the first time has an innocent memory attached to it. I had just come home from school. It was one of the last days of 7th grade, and I made a beeline for the kitchen the way I always did. Dad intercepted me, coming up out of the basement to ask how my day was. We talked idly for a moment, and I made some kind of joke about the move we'd been worrying about for so long. Dad laughed, and then he looked me in the eye. "You do know we're moving, right? It's final. They want us there by August." I nodded and shrugged it off, raiding the pantry rather than considering the implications of what he had just said. I wonder what my dad expected me to do, if I surprised him by taking it so well. But when you're 12, the phrase long-term impact is a foreign one.
The goodbye--that one is still vivid. All four of my best friends showed up, even the one I wasn't sure would come. We all congregated in my driveway, laughing nervously and making small talk about meaningless things. The white SUV loomed behind us, crammed to bursting with suitcases, snacks, and entertainment. My mom was already crying but trying to laugh it off with her own friends while my brothers were in the car, whining about wanting to get a move on.
What sticks out most in that memory is the gap. The four of us--Kendall, Sam (there was only one m then), Maggie, and I--formed up one last time in a row for the final photo op, all of us smiling boldly, the picture of youthful friendship. And then I was walking to the car and getting in, but the other three still stood there, a hole in the middle where I should have been.
That hole has changed since then. My friend summed it up best: When I left, it was like I left a round hole. But since then, the hole has turned to a square, only I'm still a round peg. Yeah, I fit in some ways, but in the end, you can't fully get over so much time apart.
And since then, I've made new memories. So many that I don't know where to start. I can't imagine how it will be when I'm 80, what kind of state I'll be in then. Maybe that's why God graces us with forgetfulness by then, just so we can stay sane.
I think I'll be ready for that twisted sanity.
My earliest memories are disjointed, jumping from place to place and person to person. They make it seem like I grew up in fits and starts, jerking from 2 years to 4 years to 5 to 7 to 9. The earliest one I have is of a plane--is it any wonder, then, that I love them so much now? I was standing at the window, looking at the clouds quietly. I couldn't have been older than 2 or 3.
Another favorite of mine was one of the first days I spent in Connecticut. It was summer, the sky a brilliant, endless blue punctuated with lazy white clouds. The soccer field back then was near the elementary school, once that has since been leveled to make way for a newer, bigger elementary school. I stood there awkwardly, too proud to hide behind my mom, but too nervous to walk out by myself and meet the other girls and boys. Lucky for me, I didn't have to worry. The best friend I've ever had charged right up to me, short, freckled, fiery. "Are you new here?" For an 8 year old, she seemed to possess an awful lot of authority. I nodded timidly.
And then she said the five words that made all the difference in the world to me: "Wanna be my soccer buddy?" Samm and I have been inseparable ever since.
The moment that everything changed the first time has an innocent memory attached to it. I had just come home from school. It was one of the last days of 7th grade, and I made a beeline for the kitchen the way I always did. Dad intercepted me, coming up out of the basement to ask how my day was. We talked idly for a moment, and I made some kind of joke about the move we'd been worrying about for so long. Dad laughed, and then he looked me in the eye. "You do know we're moving, right? It's final. They want us there by August." I nodded and shrugged it off, raiding the pantry rather than considering the implications of what he had just said. I wonder what my dad expected me to do, if I surprised him by taking it so well. But when you're 12, the phrase long-term impact is a foreign one.
The goodbye--that one is still vivid. All four of my best friends showed up, even the one I wasn't sure would come. We all congregated in my driveway, laughing nervously and making small talk about meaningless things. The white SUV loomed behind us, crammed to bursting with suitcases, snacks, and entertainment. My mom was already crying but trying to laugh it off with her own friends while my brothers were in the car, whining about wanting to get a move on.
What sticks out most in that memory is the gap. The four of us--Kendall, Sam (there was only one m then), Maggie, and I--formed up one last time in a row for the final photo op, all of us smiling boldly, the picture of youthful friendship. And then I was walking to the car and getting in, but the other three still stood there, a hole in the middle where I should have been.
That hole has changed since then. My friend summed it up best: When I left, it was like I left a round hole. But since then, the hole has turned to a square, only I'm still a round peg. Yeah, I fit in some ways, but in the end, you can't fully get over so much time apart.
And since then, I've made new memories. So many that I don't know where to start. I can't imagine how it will be when I'm 80, what kind of state I'll be in then. Maybe that's why God graces us with forgetfulness by then, just so we can stay sane.
I think I'll be ready for that twisted sanity.
An Introduction.
This is where the sidewalk ends, where conventional stops and eccentric begins. It won't always be direct, but it will always be honest and original.
Welcome.
Welcome.
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