It seems so long ago. Wandering into my grandmother's kitchen, years before she got sick and passed away, to smell the Cuban food on the stove top. I must have been eight or nine. My G.I. Joe's lying on the beige tile in the family room. She was at the counter slicing peppers. She didn't hear me over the crackling of oil in the pan. Bare feet on yellow and white linoleum make very little noise. I wasn't sneaking up on her. I loved her very much. Years later when she was sick i was filled with regret because I barely visited her when she was spending her final days in the care home, lying on a bed, her body recovering from hip surgery in spite of her mind. I was nineteen and the innocent victim of my parent's messy divorce and I was scared, I think. Cowardly. She asked about me I was told. I don't know why I didn't go earlier, but when I finally did she died a few days later. I hadn't spoken to my father for six months. He cried on my shoulder as I hugged him in my arms at her funeral.
I remember being even younger. Four or five and crying like a spoiled child because I wanted my mother to buy me a spider-man toy back when Macy's was Burdines, and Burdines sold toys. She looked at me and for some reason understood that my tears were sincere. I think she knew the answer but she had to ask if I really wanted that toy. I nodded and she bought it for me, and I went from despair to joy because at that age you don't truly understand sacrifice. I think she spent less money on clothes for herself in those modest days when I was spoiled and the table in the dining room at the house had no chairs.
I remember playing underneath my uncle's pool table, I must have been three or four, listening for the smack and thump and rumble of the balls as they landed in the pockets overhead and rolled down into the ball return. I remember the smell of liquid hand soap on my hands after I'd washed them in his game room bathroom. He had an old and broken train set built on a table of wooden 2x4's collecting dust in the dark and cluttered garage. It was huge to me, but probably smaller than I remember. But I won't ever forget the little plastic trees. The fake grassy hills and the tiny black plastic benches. The switches that I turned and turned hoping to squeeze just a little more life out of that broken train set to make it work.
I remember playing Space Invaders with my father on a handed down atari game system on a television that had dials and no buttons. The television actually had a remote control. It made clacking noises and it took my little hands a considerable amount of effort to push it's ivory white oval buttons. In those days I followed my dad around the house feeling important and carrying his tools while he wired light switches. I remember sitting on the floor of my living room on Christmas day, under the tree, playing with him, my feet wrapped in the booties of my polyester pajama pants, white rubber soles gray and dirty from running around the house. Happiness. It took the death of my grandmother about ten years ago for me to start to forgive my father for my parent's divorce. It took ten years after that for me to realize that he hadn't really done anything but live his life. I spoke with him just yesterday and if I could follow him around the house and carry his tools for the rest of my life I would. He makes me feel important.
I wish I could be stronger. For my mother. Because I'm thirty years old and she still wants to be sure I drive safe. She tells me not to drink too much and to call her when I get home after visiting her. When she introduces me to people I feel like I should apologize to them. They have to listen to her talk about me all the time.
I remember the first time I fell in love. It happened when I was seventeen. Awkward and fumbling. Her white skin was smooth and unblemished and I was almost scared to fully explore it. She wrote me little notes and we talked on the phone for hours and I snuck into her house to spend the night and we had sex during her lunch period when I would pick her up from school and drive her to my house. One time, she was wearing a blue and white plaid dress, she sat up on my bed, pulled the dress up and produced a condom. She just held it up for discovery. I took her to my senior prom. Then I graduated from the all boys prepatory high school I attended and started college, where I felt the need to break up.
I fell in love again at nineteen. Different to be sure. Nothing in common but for the fact that we were just children in adult bodies with adult urges. We played video games. Went to Disney World. We met standing outside our chemistry class and hit it off. She was my lab partner.
When I was 21 I really fell in love. She was so sweet and kind and smart. Five years older than I was, but it might as well have been fifteen. She was an adult, making $70,000 a year and I wasn't out of school yet. I barely knew what I really wanted to do with my life. She pushed me and made me stronger and better and I never really, truly, thanked her for it. It wasn't easy. I fought for her. I cried and pleaded for her. We were together for two years and then I broke it off. She must have been confused. I was too young. I ran into her a couple of years ago. I was on a date. She told us about her two beautiful children and then before she left she lightly brushed the side of my cheek and looked into my face. She half smiled before she told the girl I was with what a great guy I was.
When I was 24 I was so completely infatuated with a woman two years my senior that I was compelled to do things I never done before. Some things I'm too ashamed of to repeat here. I wrote songs about her. I worried about where she was and who she was with. I actually thought about proposing just so I could keep her close. I sat in bed, on mornings she slept over, and stroked her hair while she slept lamenting that I had to leave her side to go about my day. I showed up late to work a lot. I took her to Puerto Rico with me and we had a great time. But on the last night I think I knew. Deep down I think I knew it was the beginning of the end. There was no way i could contain her spirit. After five months she left me. It took me a year to fully get over it.
There have been others since. Each of them offering me something so perfect that I could look past all the other imperfections. There was one who gave me ravenous passion. Every kiss and every fight was the beginning and the end at once. But fire so bright and hot burns itself out. Then I met another girl. This one gave me true affection and caring. We could sit around and watch television or talk or just hang out and I could look into her eyes while inside her and feel like there was more than just a physical union happening. I still don't know why I ended that relationship.
I remember being a child and writing stories. Typing out chapters of cliche adventures that I mimicked from those I read about or saw on TV. When I was ten I asked my parents for a Casio keyboard, even though I couldn't play. I used to sit on the floor of my grandparents house and draw all day. When I was 19 I started playing the guitar. By the time I'd reached 24 I'd written and recorded a lot of songs most people will never hear. When I was 28 I made a short film entitled Take Four. Now I'm thirty and I realize that no matter how much things change, they invariably stay the same.
After thirty years I've learned that regret is terrible. That love is fleeting but worth every effort to nurture. That life takes so many unexpected turns that it's a miracle how any us make it through. I suppose some of us don't. I've learned that I love my parents so much that it hurts me. That nothing worth doing is easy and that nothing done alone is really worth doing. Happiness is temporary and needs to be appreciated in moments and not days or weeks. It can be as small and insignificant as a hug or kiss or as meaningful as getting a new job or buying a new car, but it never lasts. We have to keep searching for it though. Every day of our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment