What We Carry
This is what I do in my fiction class.
An exercise based off the poem "What We Carry" by Dorianne Laux.
"...he carries what he can
and discards the rest."
- Dorianne Laux
Morning sun glints off the chrome in the diner, and I can't take my eyes off her collar bones. I picture her in the rain, how they could collect small pools of water to mirror the grey in her eyes. How they frame her slender neck, whisps of sunbleached auburn decorating them. She must notice my staring, but the way she looks at me, without judgement or surprise, makes me want to tell her everything. All the truths and stories of my life.
We're talking about our families over pancakes and orange juice, this girl I hardly know but am already beginning to love. "My father died three years ago," I tell her, "and my mother still carries his ashes in a cardboard box on the front seat of her car." I've never told anyone this before, and I'm not sure why I'm telling her but that her face takes in the details, serene and welcoming, like everything I say is a given. "She doesn't know where they should be scattered."
She nods, takes a sip of orange juice, no sign of shock or curiosity. "Were you close?" she asks.
When I think of my father, I don't conjure a man. He is his lumpy armchair, his snuffling sound of disapproval that substituted for words, his refusal to eat the vegetables my mother cooked us, one beer after lunch and one after dinner. He is the vacuum of distance that he left in our house.
I remember my mother running her hands through her hair, grabbing her keys from the counter, saying "I'm going for a drive" as my father sat cold and silent in the living room. I remember that as soon as the front door slammed shut, my father turned on the ball game and pretended their argument had never happened, as he did with all of their arguments, barely willing to participate.
"I never liked him," I say, "but I made peace before he died." The clattering of dishes in the back adds counterpoint to our words. "What about your father?" I ask.
"He's still living," she says, and something in her eyes goes dark. "But if someone handed them to me, I don't know what I would do with his ashes." She pokes at her syrup soaked pancakes and stares at the fork in her hand, and I don't need to ask anything more to know the relative answers, the way her body shrinks at the thought of him.
I imagine my mother now, running her errands for the day, morning coffee and bags of groceries jostling my father's remains. I think of all the drives she took alone, leaving me in a house that echoed with my parents' inability to reconsile. Maybe this is making up for all that lost time, him riding shotgun next to her now. Her own way of making peace after the fact. She knew his quiet inside and out, and maybe on those drives, the relative comfort of his silence would have been enough.
A woman walks by us in a sheer summer skirt, and I follow the shadows of her legs all the way from her hips to where her strong calves emerge, then down to her fragile, beautiful ankles and back up again. A piece of my father left in me. He never cared if my mother caught him looking.
"All those years," I say, "I never thought my mother loved him. And I still don't know."
"Sometimes a person can never be what we need them to be, and we love them anyway," she says. "Or love fades, and we still want to hold on."
"Sometimes I think she's doing it to punish him," I say, and laugh. "Finally, she can force him to spend time with her."
The waitress comes to take our plates, her arm stretched across the table, offering us the bright blue veins in her pale wrist, and I try to smile so it means something because she looks as tired and lonely as the two of us at the table. I want to ask her about her father because everyone has a story, scattered shards of the person who made their birth possible, even if it's just ancestoral memory. It's impossible to dig them all out.
When my father died, I went through all the pieces. Found the few words I wanted to remember, the snapshot memories from when I was young and my mother was still happy. I learned what to carry and what to let go so that when I find parts of him in me, I can understand them and let them be.
We finish eating and I leave a generous tip on the table. When we're outside in the sun, in the pinks and greens of spring, color comes back into her face. I take her hand, feel her fingertips against mine and wonder what she was like as a girl, knowing I am little like the boy in my father's house, time then and now pushing each other into two incompatible parts. I want time to start on this afternoon and to travel in an unwavering, one way road.
We move onto lighter things, and the burden of the past sinks back beneath the surface, laughter at the ends of our sentences holding us up like little lifejackets.
.
An exercise based off the poem "What We Carry" by Dorianne Laux.
"...he carries what he can
and discards the rest."
- Dorianne Laux
Morning sun glints off the chrome in the diner, and I can't take my eyes off her collar bones. I picture her in the rain, how they could collect small pools of water to mirror the grey in her eyes. How they frame her slender neck, whisps of sunbleached auburn decorating them. She must notice my staring, but the way she looks at me, without judgement or surprise, makes me want to tell her everything. All the truths and stories of my life.
We're talking about our families over pancakes and orange juice, this girl I hardly know but am already beginning to love. "My father died three years ago," I tell her, "and my mother still carries his ashes in a cardboard box on the front seat of her car." I've never told anyone this before, and I'm not sure why I'm telling her but that her face takes in the details, serene and welcoming, like everything I say is a given. "She doesn't know where they should be scattered."
She nods, takes a sip of orange juice, no sign of shock or curiosity. "Were you close?" she asks.
When I think of my father, I don't conjure a man. He is his lumpy armchair, his snuffling sound of disapproval that substituted for words, his refusal to eat the vegetables my mother cooked us, one beer after lunch and one after dinner. He is the vacuum of distance that he left in our house.
I remember my mother running her hands through her hair, grabbing her keys from the counter, saying "I'm going for a drive" as my father sat cold and silent in the living room. I remember that as soon as the front door slammed shut, my father turned on the ball game and pretended their argument had never happened, as he did with all of their arguments, barely willing to participate.
"I never liked him," I say, "but I made peace before he died." The clattering of dishes in the back adds counterpoint to our words. "What about your father?" I ask.
"He's still living," she says, and something in her eyes goes dark. "But if someone handed them to me, I don't know what I would do with his ashes." She pokes at her syrup soaked pancakes and stares at the fork in her hand, and I don't need to ask anything more to know the relative answers, the way her body shrinks at the thought of him.
I imagine my mother now, running her errands for the day, morning coffee and bags of groceries jostling my father's remains. I think of all the drives she took alone, leaving me in a house that echoed with my parents' inability to reconsile. Maybe this is making up for all that lost time, him riding shotgun next to her now. Her own way of making peace after the fact. She knew his quiet inside and out, and maybe on those drives, the relative comfort of his silence would have been enough.
A woman walks by us in a sheer summer skirt, and I follow the shadows of her legs all the way from her hips to where her strong calves emerge, then down to her fragile, beautiful ankles and back up again. A piece of my father left in me. He never cared if my mother caught him looking.
"All those years," I say, "I never thought my mother loved him. And I still don't know."
"Sometimes a person can never be what we need them to be, and we love them anyway," she says. "Or love fades, and we still want to hold on."
"Sometimes I think she's doing it to punish him," I say, and laugh. "Finally, she can force him to spend time with her."
The waitress comes to take our plates, her arm stretched across the table, offering us the bright blue veins in her pale wrist, and I try to smile so it means something because she looks as tired and lonely as the two of us at the table. I want to ask her about her father because everyone has a story, scattered shards of the person who made their birth possible, even if it's just ancestoral memory. It's impossible to dig them all out.
When my father died, I went through all the pieces. Found the few words I wanted to remember, the snapshot memories from when I was young and my mother was still happy. I learned what to carry and what to let go so that when I find parts of him in me, I can understand them and let them be.
We finish eating and I leave a generous tip on the table. When we're outside in the sun, in the pinks and greens of spring, color comes back into her face. I take her hand, feel her fingertips against mine and wonder what she was like as a girl, knowing I am little like the boy in my father's house, time then and now pushing each other into two incompatible parts. I want time to start on this afternoon and to travel in an unwavering, one way road.
We move onto lighter things, and the burden of the past sinks back beneath the surface, laughter at the ends of our sentences holding us up like little lifejackets.
.