She had scars down both wrists and ghosts in her eyes, I knew her long once as the Lover That Sighs.
I loved her long but her heart was never mine. Lost and passive-aggressive, her ideals and proprieties were a whole different world, sad and solemn and wretched. She had different sight. She was always sad. Perhaps the closest I have ever seen her come to happiness were the times those mornings just before she left out the door for the airport and another country where nobody lived and nothing happened. I think she was happiest then.
I knew from the start she would leave quietly and suddenly one day. And I knew also that I would love her anyway.
He was a good, clean man in the wrong time and wrong place. He'd seen his share of burdens, and he'd worked hard to get back on his feet. Maybe that was what made him stand out at the first: the ability to stand back up i didn't or wouldn't have. We met one day by chance. I lived with him a few months at a time for five years. He was safe and good and clean, and I never deserved him. I never loved him. I wanted to, but I never could.
I met her when we were children. Our mothers were friends and she always came over to play. The clearest memory I have of her is the time someone got us an inflatable pool. We had just met and I didn't really like her, so we weren't really talking. Nothing really happened and we didn't really talk, but to this day all I can remember is the sunlight on the water and the red of her polka-dot swimsuit. We were about four. I met her next twelve years later, when we were grown. I didn't know her anymore.
He was quiet and didn't like to smile, but I liked his company. I left for the city with my parents and didn't see him again for thirteen years. I didn't know him anymore. Even his face had changed.
I was her father. She was my baby girl, she always was and she always will be. When she was growing up she loved to read and draw and eventually decided what she would do after she finished high school. But she was lazy and I suspect all her problems were self-inflicted. She chased after crazy ideals and dropped things as quick as she picked them up, and lived like an owl with her head in the clouds. She was, I suppose, extremely un-put-together.
Eventually she left and we didn't hear from her for a long time. I always dreaded getting up one day and answering the door for the milkman or the postman, and instead finding out she'd died climbing rocks or jumping cliffs or shooting drugs. I always did.
But that never happened, and one day she came home as quietly as when she had left. It never lasted long, two nights at the longest, but she came home every once in a while.
My father took it hard when I decided to leave. But he raised me well, and I will always come home.
I met her two weeks before I was due to leave the country. It was muddled and fumbled and more than half the time we hadn't the slightest idea what we were doing, but I would not have traded those two weeks for the world and neither would have she. It was sweet and sad, and I think it would have taken a turn for the worse had I been staying behind, but nobody knows now. She was the saddest, most intriguing person I had ever met.
I met her in her first year of high school. She was more optimistic then, more willing to believe, untried and untested. Over the years she lost faith in herself, I think, and subsequently everything else. She was a very sad person who couldn't let anyone love her, or didn't know how. Lazy too, but I never told her that to her face. No point in telling her something she already knew. I'd give her a call every few years, I don't know why, but every time she was in the same state of affairs she was in the last time I'd called, or worse. I don't know what she was doing with her life.
I was her mother. She caused me the most suffering out of all three of my children, but I was the one who understood her the most at home. My husband was quick to anger and quick to accuse, for all the good of his heart, and all his black and white could see was that our daughter had become useless and a misfit. I gave her my quiet and my calm, but I think some of her father's lostness and wild yearning are in there too.
My mother is the strongest person I know. She will carry on long after I am gone.
I met her the first time she travelled alone. She was buying baby oil for sunburn, and baby oil makes skin hard to come off after the sunburn so you end up with darker skin, but I didn't tell her that. We talked about the Egyptians and their stupid pyramids and the mindless Chinese and their wall. She looked like all the young ones do, still searching for themselves. She stood tall and spoke out when she thought she should, and that is ultimately the right thing to do, but it will get her into trouble one day. I told her the same things I tell all the people I meet, and she was, for an instant, like the daughter of my soul. Only for an instant. She left after that and the next time I met her, she was wandering far.
No comments:
Post a Comment