“Long before I am supposed to die, I learn everything I cannot let my adult-self do from my father.” I think this thought out loud day in and day out. I remember the life I once lived, and I remember it all too well. A life lived too well, to the point where living for today seems rather unimportant. It was all too sudden, you know , that feeling you come across when you show up for class and you didn’t know there was going to be a test, and that test is to determine the rest of your otherworldly existence, or what those standardized tests want you to believe as children, that they will be able to deduce. Childhood, it was all too sudden. That hill, riding down it on Sancho’s Skateboard, begging God to build one of these with brakes sometime in the near future, or running down it while mom raced me in her beat up Chevy, you know, the one that Sancho scraped up, leaving her without a true explanation as to why. Oh that hill, she looks younger than I do today.
***
“What is it, you can tell me Neil? Please tell me????” I asked in utter excitement, upon first sight of this awe-inspiring rectangular box donned with electric blue wrapping paper, and orange swirls.
“It’s a pencil sweetheart. Happy 6th Birthday honey, it’s a pencil.” He responded with a smile that is as infectious now as it was then. It’s moments like that that never seem to let be me. “Just leave me alone.” I ask my past daily, and yet nothing is absorbed by her youthful glaze, she didn’t rescue me then and apparently, it seems like she won’t be rescuing me anytime soon. I cannot get past it and find a reason to exist, not sitting around for so long, waiting for Childhood’s phone call. Even if I answer, the pain will only be magnified tenfold, I will never be able to talk to her again.
***
“Give me just one more night, one more night, cause I can’t wait forever.” Sir Phil spoke eloquently in that bar, upon that tiny Toshiba television screen, as Pop and I sat entangled in each other’s arms, relishing in the beauty of Classic American music. I remember those nights when he would make it home barely before the Sunrise; I thought for sure he was Phil, the man himself, since he looked just like him, and what other logical explanation would suffice for a man with a wife and a child rarely being home, other than being on tour? Nevertheless, whatever his reasons were, what I would give to have one more moment in the flesh, with my papa, my own sir Phil.
***
“Let’s go to 7-eleven for some Carrot juice, how about that?” My lovely Aunt’s voice still reverberates deep within my ears. An intangible hold remains clutched upon my heart, each and every time I drive along Parthenia and pass that special source of fodder and delight for both her and I every weekend during those sweet Saturday afternoons of a time past. We’d go for Carrot juice and sure enough I’d con my way into getting a Pina Colada Slurpee and a Chocolate chip cookie instead from her, the family- renowned Dentist we all loved so very much. I remember those Sunday nights with her, as I waited for Mom to come get me from Grandma’s, sitting around, entertained by the labor of releasing Fava beans from their sheltered green hammocks into a colander, alongside Inspector Gadget’s siren and Nickelodeon. It’s moments like that that never seem to let be me. Nowadays, I simply live, holding on to this innate understanding of hope and optimism. They work hand in hand, but they differ entirely and with a high degree of complexity.
***
I was optimistic to go to school that Monday in 1990, with my new set of Crayola crayons, after the weekend where the so called “Pencil” became an orange and blue plastic bike of some sort with training wheels. My mother said to leave my crayons in the car for fear that they might get stolen, I mean after all this wasn’t your measly little box of crayons with the sharpener built in the back, this was a heavy duty, plastic briefcase with each color of the rainbow multiplied by ten different shades, and it had a metal sharpener, not a crappy cardboard boxed one, so of course I concurred and left my crayons with her. I was hopeful to come home that afternoon and find them intact and ready to try my hand at coloring, reasonably, a Picasso inspired piece. Upon my hopefulness, my dismay became clear and apparent when I realized before my zany Middle Eastern mother did, that she had left my crayons on top of the back seat, besides the rear window, for the sun to feast upon them. What was left of the Sun’s lunch was caked into the backseat so rigidly that for the next seven years, it accompanied me to every school function, every family function, and every birthday party, everything until the day the junkyard representative came and took her away.
***
That philosophy of hope and optimism lingers on within me presently. I may hope to see the adorable little girl; with the yellow barrette clipping her bangs aside, again, but hope is something we all have. Hope can come true for some, yes, but is my hope guaranteed? The difference between hope and optimism is that my hope deals with an intangible notion that no one, myself included, can ever reach again, and with a craving like that, then optimism, the kind a sweet child has going to a dinner at Grandpa’s, where all he ever makes is Liver and Onions, is probably light years away from fulfilling what my spirit truly longs for.
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