It was all so long ago.
I wear my past like a necklace . . . spectred evanescent adornment.
I wear what was with bitter pride.
What was is no more.
A ghostly necklace . . . bits of sparkle and darkness and mist and smoke.
A string of caustic crystals . . . tamed and strung.
I finger the beads occasionally, tumble the sharp bits of memory in my palm.
I am in control.
I squeeze tightly and examine that pain.
Examine that memory.
And then open my fist.
And release . . . what was.
Mark and I took Kallan to the Portland International Raceway today.
After a while, I get tired of sitting in the full-sun bleachers and watching the incredibly loud cars go round and round. Kallan is antsy as well, so she and I leave Mark behind. We wander down the track and then climb endless stairs to cross through a tunneled bridge that leads over the track to the center field.
We listen as the cars roar past beneath our feet, “Mom, why do they have this all closed up so we can’t see? They should leave it open.”
“Yeah, but then this is where everyone would want to be. Everyone would be gathered up here on the bridge with their drinks and their food and their garbage. Dropping stuff down onto the track. Crowding to get a better view. It would be dangerous . . . for the people up here and the racers down there.”
Kallan thinks for a moment as we keep walking, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
We descend the endless stairs on the other side of the bridge into a grassy treed area of cool breezes and shade. From here, we can only hear the cars. None of the track is visible.
Oh well.
The shade is lovely.
We choose a spot and sit.
The noise of the cars and the heat of the day combined have a hypnotic somnolent effect on both of us.
We lie back in the grass and stare at fluffy white clouds against impossibly vast blue.
We point out the animals and shapes and figures we see in the clouds.
“Look there, where I am pointing.”
“Where?”
“There.”
“There?”
“Yes! See it?”
“Oh yeah! It does look like an elephant!”
I try to remember the last time I lay in the grass and stared at the clouds.
It has been a long time.
I am overwhelmed with gratefulness to Kallan for this moment, and I roll to hug her and kiss her forehead.
She smiles at me, “I love you too, silly Mom.”
The word “too” fills me with happiness . . . I did not speak, and I adore that Kallan reads love in my gestures.
We stare at the sky for a while longer.
“There! Right there! Do you see it?”
“Yes! Yes, I do.”
Soft time passes, the edges of these moments caressed and smoothed by warmth and sleepiness and the small fluffy bits of cottonwood seed that drift above us.
Clouds below the clouds.
Mark finds us lying in the grass.
Time to go.
The races aren’t done for the day, but it’s time to go.
The three of us walk together, back to the endless stairs and up.
As we reach the top of the stairs, there is a man. He is much younger than I am, perhaps not quite 30. He is tall and handsome and dark-haired. He is standing just at the transition between the stairs and the tunnel, where there is a high solid wall. The wall is high enough to keep people from watching the race from this spot, but the wall is not yet a tunnel, and it is open at the top.
Open to the track below.
Or so I imagine, because I cannot see what lies beyond the wall.
Neither can the man.
But the small boy can see.
The small boy perched on the man’s shoulders can see what lies beyond the wall.
And he is terrified.
His voice is panicky, “Daddy, let me down! Daddy, I want to get down!”
His father reaches up to hold the boy in place with his hands, “No. You said you wanted to see the cars. I’ve got you. Tell me what you see. Damn it, look at the cars.”
The boy wails and tries to twist and lower himself into his father’s face and into his father’s embrace.
The man yanks his son’s arm from his face and twists the boy around, “Look at the cars! Why are you such a baby? I’ve got you. Don’t be such a chicken.”
The boy shrieks in terror and wraps himself over his father’s head, his hands clutching at his father’s hair.
The man’s face is flushed . . . with heat, with alcohol, and with shame.
People are staring.
The shame turns to fury.
The man rips the boy from his perch and swings him to the ground in a huge careless one-armed arc.
As we walk past them both, the father speaks to his son, his voice bitter and cruel, “You are such a little chickenshit.”
All of this takes place in the span of a few seconds.
A few caustic crystalline seconds in the life of a child.
Kallan takes my hand.
We start our journey through the tunnel above the racetrack.
The cars roar below us.
The small boy races past us on chubby toddler legs.
Races away from his father.
Races all by himself to the other end of the tunnel, to several men who wait for him there.
He rushes into the embrace of an older man who looks very much like the younger man.
His grandfather?
I don’t know.
I only know that my throat is painfully tight.
So tight it is difficult to breathe.
The past squeezes tightly and insists that I feel this pain.
Remember this pain.
The past does not let go.
It forces me to acknowledge its power.
The past is not evanescent.
The past is as real and untamed as the ragged breaths I force over the beaded glass shards within my throat.
It is instead my control that drifts before my eyes and then disappears.
Like cottonwood seeds.
Like clouds.
I clench my fists.
And for a few excruciating moments, I release . . . what is.
I am instead myself held.
By what was.
