An Afternoon in Late October, 2008All of a sudden he missed everyone. Usually his present mind chugged along bumpily, unsure of whether or not it wanted to continue forward, as was its normal way. Intermittent blasts of past, random, events would interject into his daily, mushy thought processes, but today, oddly, memories flooded into the present as clear as if they had happened yesterday, and for long enough for him to dwell upon them. His first instinct was to share these things with the woman whom he noticed walking about his room; to him this information was like a gift he felt he had to share. If anything, he needed her to stop moving around so much; her quick, nervous pacing of the room made him anxious, and he hated the way she adjusted the photograph frames on his dresser.
“My wife would not be happy if she saw another woman doing the arranging around here,” he barked at her.
But she gave no verbal response, just snatched her hands away from the photographs, gave another little spin around the room, and finally sank into a seated position on the edge of the old man’s oversized bed.
The old man struggled to keep his breath regular, and concentrate on what he wanted to tell the young woman; he worried she would stand up again if he didn’t begin speaking soon. But he became distracted by the wrinkles imbedded in his hands, tracing the deep creases in his palms with watery eyes; his eyes had always been sensitive, with the slightest breeze in their direction causing them to sting and tear. He constantly worried people would think he was crying.
“I know a song that reminds me of things…you know, things of things. Details about the details. A specific cluster of freckles. The crow’s feet creases on the sides of someone’s eyes that I love. There is a big misconception about wrinkles, don’t you think? I don’t see the big fuss. I love my mother’s wrinkled hands. I just love how they smell of home, and their oily, warm feel. They’re wrinkly, but they still look nice. And boy, are they strong. I know they’re strong because once I climbed up the oak tree in our front yard to get the cat down (she had been up there all day, and I was worried she would never come down and starve). But, the funny part is, I got stuck too!” He chuckled at the thought, looking past the woman’s eyes, as if watching the scene play out on a projector against the wall of his bedroom. “But my mother wouldn’t let me panic. She held on to my legs, the little sticks that dangled from my perch in the big tree, and coaxed me into coming down. I held the cat tightly in my arms; he must have practically choked. After many minutes of hesitation, I let myself slip from the thick, rough branch into her arms, and I was a perfect fit. Her hands squeezed me, as tight as I squeezed the cat in my own hands…” He drifted off, his watery eyes now focusing on nothing at all.
“Yeah, you’re mother was really beautiful too,” the young woman managed to provide some sort of response, though it seemed automated and unnatural.
“Well, she still is!” the old man became defensive of his mother, suddenly becoming alert in the present.
“Uh-uh,” she gazed around the room, stopping on the ancient looking clock on the old man’s dresser. “It’s almost dinnertime, so I should go. They’ll be taking you down to the dining hall soon, and I don’t want to be in the way.”
He looked up, nodded as if he only vaguely understood this meant that their time together was over. The wastebasket overflowed with tissues, with some crumpled lying near it on the floor; the room was so dark and damp (the generic Venetian blinds aligned perfectly like dominos let no trace of sunlight in the room-his eyes were also sensitive to light) that he could almost smell the mustiness of the paper tissues.
“Who are you?” he asked the young woman, who clutched her purse, as well as her lips, tightly as she backed up towards the door, still facing the old man.
“I’ll see you next week. Have a nice dinner,” she said softly as she turned the knob clumsily and stepped out into the hallway.
There was much more he wanted to tell her about, but he couldn’t quite grasp what the real thing was he wanted to say. That story about his mother saving him from the tree was not it, he knew that much. Every word was left on the tip of his tongue, and it seemed the right ones could never emerge in the right order, in the right context.
But soon his nightstand clock ticked its way to 5:30 pm, and he heard a quick, perky knock on his door, and all the words that had just previously felt like jumping off his tongue like a trampoline, were swallowed down his throat and forgotten in the depths of his stomach.
A Morning in Late October, 1999 Dear Laurel,
Today is my birthday, but to %99.99999 of humanity, it is just another day. Some people get to come to my birthday party and eat cake and have a fun time, so it’s special to them, and some people in the world were also born on this day, so it’s special for them too. But other than that, no one else really knows what day it is. Everyone in the house is still sleeping, but I was too excited to sleep, so I’m awake, looking out my window onto the front yard. I think Mom might be giving me a bunny for my birthday, because that’s what I’ve been wanting forever. I even think I heard it scratching on its cage in the middle of the night, but I may have just been imagining it.
Sometimes I get embarrassed on my birthday, because Mom always cries, says its just as much “her day” as it is “my day,” because I came out of her stomach. I don’t really see why that matters now though, I mean, that was so long ago, does she even remember it?
The flowers are still blooming, even though it’s almost cold now, probably because our automatic sprinklers go off everyday, and they’re fertilized all the time, even though in real nature they wouldn’t be so perfect, or beautiful. But it smells really wonderful, it’s a smell I never want to forget. A combination of fresh cut grass, car exhaust, and the freshness after the first rain. I’m sitting in my windowsill on the second story, curled up in a little ball, almost falling into the planter that sits right outside. I can see the little bugs even littler mouths chewing very little pieces of leaves, and I wonder how long (hypothetically) it would take them to eat the contents of the entire planter.
Well, I better go downstairs, because by now Mom must be awake, and there will probably be a cheesy Hallmark card and maybe some store-bought flowers on the dining room table waiting for me. Inside, it will say something like “To my beautiful daughter, you are so precious…etc,” with lots of X’s and O’s and I’ll have to give everyone kisses, which I don’t really like. The house will be very clean too, which will be weird, but that’s fine because it means that today is different.
Love,
Laurel
With obvious pleasure, Laurel took a pink envelope out of her desk drawer, folded her letter carefully, placed it in the envelope, and licked it shut. On the front, in bold black Sharpie, she wrote “Do not open until 10/24/2008.” She looked at her Mickey Mouse watch; it read 10:06. On the front of the envelope, next to the date, she wrote (10:06 AM).
***
Narrow sunbeams peered behind closed curtains, producing a little warmth only after soaking in one position for many long minutes. They were only slightly decipherable from the shade. Laurel’s grandfather sat in the ancient rocking chair that dominated the living room, directly under one of these shiny beams striking through the window. His features (nose, lips, ears) were large, but his body was not especially bulky, nor did it appear strong, and his wrinkles were already deep cuts covering every inch of his body.
The room was devoid of any decoration, and wasn’t especially clean either. The usual thin layer of dust had not been swept away, Laurel’s little brother’s toys were still mounted in copious little piles around the perimeter of the room, and the drabness created by the closed curtains pulled at Laurel’s heartstrings.
“Where’s Mom?” she asked meekly, barely able to speak over the choke in her throat, a sign of eminent tears.
“Your Mama’s at church, where she is every Sunday morning, of course. Where you should be too, if you ask me,” Laurel’s Grandfather replied, giving an obvious “huff” to point out his mild outrage at the idea of a nine year old home on a Sunday morning.
“But…” she did not know where to begin. Where were the colorful balloons? The presents and cards piled high on the mudroom table? Where was the smell of party goods baking and crystal bowls containing candy and nuts for her party guests?
“It’s my birthday,” Laurel said, barely audible.
“You’re birthday, eh? Well, what are you complaining about then? Aren’t you happy to be alive? You made it another year!” he became animated and ecstatic at the idea of his granddaughter standing before him, healthy, and passing a mark that proved she was growing older.
“Of course I’m alive. There’s nothing really to it. It’s not like I’ve done anything to be alive,” she paused, dumbfounded. “But…won’t I be getting any presents today?”
“Why would anyone give you presents if you haven’t actually done anything in particular to keep yourself alive?” he retorted.
She did not have a response for this. Instead she plopped down on the couch, her muscles losing all sense of tenseness and energy. Her legs dangled, lifeless, her arms were left in the position where they had naturally fallen, unable to clench with frustration. She stared at the grandfather clock, noisily ticking away her day, or what she thought was her day. Nothing came to mind as an explanation; perhaps once people reached a certain age, and it was clear they were officially fixed in this world, celebrating birth, an act performed so long ago, became unnecessary. Or perhaps it was only her own birth that was not worth celebrating anymore, and maybe now, to 100% of society, today does not matter.
A Morning in Late October, 10:06 AM 2008The next morning, Laurel remembered the letter, but did not expect any answers from it. These days, it was clear there was nothing to look forward to, especially the repetition each year of one’s day of birth, which meant there was never a need to look forward, and fall back again.
She removed the letter from the two other, increasingly large envelopes that contained the original letter, which was tucked away beneath her mattress. This mattress had followed her around for many years; at first she could not afford a new one, but in the end, she had not been able to sleep anywhere but within the indentation of her nine-year old body, the original resident of the bed.
The letter was ripped open nonchalantly; butterflies did not swarm around her stomach as she had always expected, maybe because she thought she knew exactly what it would say. But as her eyes perused it from top to bottom, she was stunned to realize she did not recognize it at all. Who was this person? Who was the “one who may have just been imagining it?”
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