I have always found it to be strange that memories could change so wildly over time. I had left my childhood home at the age of eleven and always remembered it to be a huge building with sprawling lawns and high ceiling rooms, though when I visited today it seemed to have shrunk in both area and grandeur. Whereas once it stood out like a beacon on the street, almost as though it were the only house to be seen in color against a black and white backdrop it now blended in to the road, it sank into the street.
It was almost pleasing that it just looked like a normal house now. This building had seen so many ferocious moments; such wonderful happiness and such colossal despair in my short life there that it seemed almost as though the walls should still buckle from emotional stress and that the roof should be beset with worry lines.
My mom still lives there but she now rents a couple of the rooms out to students to make some extra money. She hadn’t worked since the accident but the insurance payout covered her costs for a few years, and she was finally able to visit some cousins of hers in Poland. Now that she felt a little bit better about things she was able to do a little more to support herself and to enjoy life a little, which I thought was a good thing considering the amount of time that had passed.
Since turning eighteen I had been allowed to see my mom at my Grandmothers house every Christmas and Easter, and my mom had taken me to a restaurant for my birthday. I had driven past this house a couple of times, it was the first thing that I did after getting my license; but I hadn’t called in advance and I hadn’t stopped. I had just driven past. Quickly. With tears in my eyes.
I took my time walking to the house. I had driven here, but parked my car down the street so that my arrival wouldn’t be ‘announced’ with a grind of my steering column or a plume of exhaust fumes. Today wasn’t Easter, Christmas or my Birthday, but I had called ahead and I was here at the blessing of Clive and Alexandra.
A wooden fence, standing at around 5 feet tall now circled the front yard where once a bush had stood. Planted by my father and preened by my stepfather, it had apparently been a too organic and needy memorial for my mother and had been ripped down shortly after I had left the house. A small cross, resting place of my Guinea Pig Sir Squeeksalot still remained, causing me to smile generously. Bending to inspect it closely, I wiped the dirt away from the name that Joe had carved into the wood, remembering the sober funeral service that had been held in the garden.
‘We gather here to remember Sir Squeeksalot’ Joe had said in a snooty voice, ‘A pig of the people and a friend to the stars. Lord above, we ask that you fill the water bottle of love for his arrival, and clean his cage out weekly, Amen’.
‘Amen’ I said softly, that day and this. Touching the top of the cross gently, I stood to face the front door.
I could see my mother inside the house. She was pacing the floor of the kitchen, wiping her hands hurriedly with a couple of sheets of kitchen towel. She seemed to be very nervous and was constantly tripping over a small black and white cat that wound itself between her legs and rubbed its nose against any hard surface that was within its reach. My mother always seemed shorter than I remembered her to be, probably because I had myself added height generously but it still surprised me that I now appeared to be a lot taller than her. She had clearly lost a lot of weight even since our last meeting, the muscles of her arms kind of sagged and the skin on her neck had lost much of its elasticity.
I couldn’t bear to knock on the door of the house that I had grown up in. Something just seemed so wrong with that. Even though I had had girlfriends I had never taken them with me when I’d met my mother – some things that ‘normal’ people did I just didn’t feel comfortable with. When I had first met my mother again after a seven-year gap, I shook her hand. People normally hug their mom, right? Over time things had become a little more comfortable; but we still didn’t know each other, we didn’t chat on the phone and we didn’t email.
She tripped once more over the cat before kicking it gently. Sliding across the tiles, the animal picked itself up and crouched, shaking his behind before pouncing onto a brown paper bag. While the cat fought my mother watched, shaking her head in what appeared to be amusement. When I tapped on the glass door, both stopped their movements, shooting shocked looks in my direction.
“Zack!” my mom said, still with a look of surprise on her face.
“Did I get the right day?” I called, talking though the glass of the still closed door. “I can come back another time if you want me to?”
“No no!” she said, now finally walking towards the door. “Y-you just startled me, t-that’s all”. Opening the door she stood awkwardly, wiping her hands repeatedly against her apron. She smiled brightly but her brow was furrowed, nerves identified by the slight stammer of her words and the delicate shaking of her arms. “Please, please come in Zack”.
“Something smells nice” I said as I stepped across the threshold and into my childhood residence for the first time as an adult. “Have you been baking?”
“Apple pie” she said, walking towards the oven before stopping to face me. “You, um… you do like apple pie don’t you Zack?”
“Yeah, yeah I like apple pie” I said, lying uneasily. I started to feel myself struggling with a familiar question once more that was making me uncomfortable and had in turn begun to affect all of my responses. It was a conundrum that I had discussed with my therapist, but she didn’t seem to think that it was a big deal. I still didn’t know what to call my mother when face to face with her. I found it strange though that whenever I was talking with someone else about my mother I knew how to refer to her. If I were talking to Clive or Alexandra she was simply ‘mom’, if it was someone that knew me fairly well, then ‘mother’ usually distinguished her from Alexandra herself. For anyone else, ‘birth mother’ told a number of stories, none entirely correct but most as close to the truth as we’d get without a lengthy explanation. When faced with the woman though, when standing alone with the person that had delivered me into this world; I just didn’t know how to address her, nothing felt comfortable. A huge part of me wanted to jump into her arms and hug her, call her mommy and forget all that had happened. It wasn’t possible though and it just wasn’t right. As much as I had to forgive to move on with my life, I also couldn’t forget either.
We ate apple pie in the kitchen, with the cat trying to eat the vanilla ice cream from my bowl. Called ‘Arthur’, he had apparently been found as a child by my mother and been given a home, food, and love. The irony wasn’t lost on me but I nodded my head obediently when asked if he was the ‘cutest thing that I had ever seen’ and allowed him to chase my spoon around the bowl when I had finished eating. The pie was surprisingly good for an apple pie, especially one that my mom had made.
“I make pies for the students sometimes” she said, throwing a thumb in the direction of the stairs. “They make their own dinners but sometimes we all have a meal together, usually on a Sunday. Jared is a whiz with a chicken and Ben likes his vegetables so it all comes together pretty well. I usually let them drink wine too; do you think that’s alright? Jared is still only twenty”.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I said, smiling meekly. While still a little uneasy the warmth of the kitchen had relaxed me a little, the smell of the pie helping to build a foreign but comforting impression of my mother as home maker and quasi-matriarch. While she prepared the coffee, bringing a small white china jug to the table for cream, I stood and walked to the rear window, looking out over the generous lawn.
“Remember when you used to play soccer out there?”
My mother was now standing directly behind me. Glancing over my right shoulder I noticed her gazing into the distance, her eyes now twinkling in reminisce. A soft smile broke gently across her face while her left hand delicately placed itself onto my right arm.
“Yeah, yeah I remember” I whispered.
“You used to charge around out there with Joe. I’d stand here and watch you two sometimes; I’d wash the dishes and then stand right where you’re standing now with my coffee.
“You did?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “You were usually asleep when Joe was here”.
“So you thought” she sighed, squeezing my arm tenderly. “Sometimes I’d hear you two chatting and come down here, just to watch”.
I continued to look out towards the lawn, remembering the days that Joe and I would sit on the grass, looking for and identifying insects and talking about the issues of our lives. The year that I spent with him seemed to last for the bulk of my childhood. Idyllic summer days spent fishing; walking and playing with Joe accounted for a large percentage of happy youthful memories, the pain of the goodbye only now a footnote of the period.
Squinting my eyes to bypass the generous shafts of sunlight that breached the cover of the oak tree I spotted a lonesome Silver Birch, planted over ten years ago during a camp-out in the garden. Making a mental note to myself to visit the site after coffee, I turned back to face my mother who was now playing carefully with the cat.
“I’m going to be a big brother” I said.
My mother immediately switched her attentions from Arthur to myself, turning her head to face me quickly.
“What kind of big brother Zack? Is Alexandra…?”
“No no. I mean I’m going to join the Big Brother program. I have an appointment to see Christian. Remember? He was the guy who paired me up with Joe”.
“Right” she said, clearly not remembering. “Are you sure that it’s a good idea?”
“I think so,” I said after a momentary pause. “Despite what happened, I still think that it was a good thing”.
“OK” she said, nodding her head methodically. “I’m hardly in a position to tell you what to do as it is Zack; and it’s pretty clear that you’ve thought about it”.
“I have”, I told her stoically. “I mean, I think it’s time to give something back”.
My mother attempted to find something to do with her hands, something to give the appearance to me that her mind was not solely fixed upon her memories of my life as a little brother. Taking a cloth from the counter-top she wetted it under the faucet, wringing it out with vigor. Tossing it between her hands she turned to face me once more, her eyes now demonstrating her clear concern.
“Be careful, ok Zack?”
“I will” I replied, before adding nervously “mom”.
As much as she tried to persuade me otherwise, I still felt like a guest in my mother’s home. I spent longer there today than I had planned, sitting and talking about my job with her, playing with the cat and reading a newspaper that was apparently intended for Jared. I got the feeling that we both were aware of the value of time, knowing that if our relationship were to rebuild then we would both have to take the opportunities to get to know each other again. While constantly aware of an emotional undercurrent, it was at least clear to me that this woman cared, that she wanted to get to know me.
“I nearly forgot!” she said, jumping out of her seat. I found some of your things tucked into the far corner of the closet in your room when I was clearing it for the boys. I kept them for you… was that a good thing to do?”
“Sure” I said, a little nervously. Boys hide things in their closets because they don’t want their moms to find them, regardless of the time that passes. “What did you find?”
“There were some of your toys” she said, walking towards the pantry. “You always kept them in such good condition! You used to open them, look at them and then put them back in their box. Jared looked some of them up on the Internet; they’re worth a little bit of money now!”
Much as I appreciated the effort involved, the thought of a surrogate child going through my things did not fill me with brotherly love. Making a snap decision to take home the rather clumsy looking box that my mother was now dragging across the kitchen tiles, I tried to guess the contents of the container.
Toys; obviously would be in there. The box wasn’t huge and looked as thought it had once housed a small television, so there probably wasn’t much room for large objects. Hopefully a few of my comic books had survived the years, Joe had taught me to buy two of the special editions, one to read and the other to wrap in plastic to preserve. I remembered burning a few of them in one of my pre-teenage rants but even as an eleven year old arsonist I had been aware of the value of property.
A large section of my sub-conscious was screaming at me. Loudly. ‘Journals!’
“There isn’t too much in here” my mother said still lugging the box. Heaving a sigh of relief I stood to walk towards her, cranking my neck a little to catch an early glimpse of my childhood in a box.
“I can just go through it” I said, quietly.
“There are some comic books” she said, clearly oblivious to my plea. “Some more toys, a baseball glove”
“It’s alright, I can go through it” I repeated, with more urgency in my voice.
“Oh your journals” she said, dispassionately. Holding one in each hand she looked up at me, apparently slightly taken aback that I was now standing directly above her. “Do you still write these things Zack?”
“I don’t” I said, telling her what I knew she wanted to hear. If the question had been asked a week ago, it would have been the truth.
My journals had always been a bone of contention for my mother and for my step-father, Billy. It had been their idea that I start to write one when at the age of nine they had become so concerned about my mental state as to try to trick me into mapping it out onto paper. Billy had taken me with him to the store where a beautiful diary had been chosen for me, leather covered with gold leafing. Embossed upon the front of the book were the words ‘DIARY – PERSONAL’ with space underneath for the biographical data of its owner.
I didn’t write a single meaningful word in that diary. Even at a young age I knew what was going on here, my mother and my step father’s failed attempts to ‘talk to me’ had failed; them both trying to find more elaborate and expensive ways to cajole the information from my psyche that would confirm their suspicions.
The idea of a journal did however appeal to me. A studious but rebellious child, I wanted to write something that I had control over; not something that had to be handed to an adult and graded. The notion that I could write my thoughts down and keep them for reflection at a later date, there had been a certain allure attached to that.
I had accepted the leather-bound diary with thanks and kept it in the living room, at the desk that had been established for homework and bills. Here I would place little tidbits of information for my mom and Billy to seize upon, on one hand proving that their promise to respect my privacy was a falsehood, but on the other ensuring that I got exactly what I wanted for Christmas without having to blatantly request it. I would let them know that I was doing well in school and that I had plenty of friends, who absolutely did not bully me or take my things. According to the words within the leather-bound journal, Zack Harris was a finely balanced boy, coping admirably with all of the problems that his young life had encountered. He was emotionally secure and socially strong, a credit to his upbringing and a ray of optimism in an otherwise cruel and depressing world.
I have often reflected upon the value of this, particular journal. At the time I only appreciated its value as a one way communicative tool, a way to tell my mom and Billy that they didn’t need to worry about me and that everything was fine. Of course, whether they were required to worry or not, everything was certainly not fine. I was bullied. I did not have plenty of friends, and I was often the victim of childhood thefts. The signs surely had to be there, right? Can a nine year old child really hide bruises from his mom? Can a sheer terror of the dark be normal at that age? Is it right that a nine year old steals money from his moms’ purse? Probably not, but they had the journal to fall back on. Whenever the question was asked, ‘is Zack alright’, the journal would be discretely opened, read, and replaced. ’Zack is fine’. Question answered. On with their lives.
In truth, that was what suited me at the time. Bruises were not noticed, but I didn’t show them off either. I preferred, even at such a young age, to face my battles alone. I would often lose, but I wouldn’t let anybody down either. All of my emotions were largely kept to myself with no inclination or method of release.
To a large extent, this changed with the introduction of the journals. The leather-bound version was not a place for personal catharsis, but was a place to display my idea self. It was a place to write about parties and picnics and games of baseball and soccer at the park with my many friends. The leather-bound journal became my imaginary friend; it was ‘the way life should be’.
The rulebook journals that were kept an old shoe box inside a suitcase at the back of my closet though, they were ‘the way life is’.
“Did you want to take these with you?” my mother asked, still waving the books in the air. “I can get rid of them if you wanted?”
“No!” I shouted. “No… sorry… I’ll take them”.
Taking the box underneath my arm I realized that it was probably time for me to be leaving. I had no prior engagements, and we had not set a time for our meeting to end; but I desperately didn’t want to outstay my welcome.
“Well” I said, tapping my fingers onto the box, “this has been nice”.
“Yes” she said with a genuine smile. “Do you think, maybe, we could do it again sometime?”
“I’m sure we could. I’ll give you a call, ok?”
“OK” she said, still with a smile.
Driving from my mom’s house, after an extended and uncomfortable goodbye; I had time to reflect upon my visit. Generally speaking, I didn’t have much room for complaint. A couple of uncomfortable silences were balanced out by some relaxed moments, nothing had really been resolved but hard work was being done to prepare for that in the future. Pulling into the parking lot of an abandoned hardware store, I sat for a while observing a pair of squirrels as they argued over a discarded tissue. While one of them had a clear size advantage, the fight in the smaller squirrel was admirable, and it was he who seemed to be winning this altercation. Smiling as I watched them chatter, I realized that they were both apparently oblivious to my presence, giving me a front row seat to their domestic quarrel.
A screeching of tires and the sound of a car shunting another vehicle at a reasonable speed soon put an end to this little show. Leaving the tissue where it fell, the squirrels both leapt for the nearest tree, possibly to garner balcony seats for themselves for their own entertainment. Car doors now slammed as raised voices began to designate blame, while car horns provided a musical score.
Realizing that I may be stuck within the parking lot for a while, my only exit impeded by the collision and it’s participants; I removed my seat belt and popped the lever to my seat, allowing myself the luxury of a recline. With my head able to see behind the passenger seat, my eyes fixed upon the box of my childhood that sat innocently on the back seat. Allowing my right hand to blindly feel its way around, it bypassed the boxes of toys and plastic covered comic books, coming to rest upon the pile of slightly tattered journals. Whereas the journal kept in the living room was leather-bound, beautiful and contained the descriptions of a make-believe life, these books were simple rule books, taken from a pile that Billy kept in the attic, containing the inner thoughts of a troubled mind.
I had never been one for rules. The leather-bound journal afforded one page for each day of the year, dictating that I should fill each page but no more, regardless of the events of that particular day. My journals however, the ones hidden between the mattress and box-spring, followed a different procedure.
I kept up to three different journals at any one time. Two of them were kept for a couple of years, and were known by me as ‘school’ and ‘life’. The ‘school’ book detailed my life at the John F. Kennedy Elementary School, and contained lesson plans, seating arrangements, lists of teachers, pupils, friends and enemies. Rather than day to day entries, it would be kept as more of a scrapbook, a place for random thoughts and events. It would though follow a timeline of my time at the school, and therefore fulfilled my own definition of ‘journal’, being that it was a place for private reflections and was not to be seen by foreign eyes.
The ‘life’ book followed a more traditional format. With an entry for each day, but with no self imposed rules as to length or content, it was a place to describe the relationships that I had with my mom, Billy, and the other random family members that would visit the house. Here I wrote what I really thought, how I did appreciate what Billy did but how I still wanted my Dad back. Here I would write that I blamed my mom for what happened, but that I would never tell her how I felt. I would sometimes write about how I blamed myself for what happened and then I would go back and scrawl through those entries with a thick marker pen. I could usually still write what I’d written though; the marker didn’t totally blank the words out. I would always re-read these books, they would be full usually after a month at which time I would sit, alone, and read through the whole thing. Then I would put the book away, inside the shoebox in the far corner of my closet.
The third journal was different. The third journal was kept for just under a year, and started when I first met Joe.
I first met Joe in the summer of 1992, after my step-father Billy had decided that a big brother would help me to deal with the traumas of my young life. I had started this journal on the day of that first meeting, and religiously documented our lives together from that moment onwards. Sitting here today, holding this book in my hands for the first time in seven long years, I remembered quickly that I did not re-read the entries as I wrote, but that I did take more time and that I invested more effort in the writing of this ‘Joe’ journal than in all of the others put together.
