Point me to 95
Nothing makes me happier then the times I remember those moments from my youth. Growing up unconventionally, photos with my first cat, a gigantic bag of weed in the background. Never being allowed to play with guns, be it duck hunt or super soakers, we’d sneak over to friends houses like we were getting high behind our parents house. There is nothing better then doing something you know is taboo. Watching the first Scream in Jennine Calpo’s den, hiding my face behind a blanket every time someone got stabbed, I haven’t changed at all have I?
All the things I should have appreciated then. We never, EVER, did something I have ever heard of any other family doing. Eating dinner together EVERY night. Artichokes, once getting past the leafy exteriors, cutting up the hearts in perfect triangles, offering to the others at the table, ‘Would you like a piece of my heart?’. My dad choosing to ignore it when I would sneak my vegetables to my dad’s plate, he sat next to me nightly. He would always play drums on the sink in perfect rythym to Van Morrison, the Grateful Dead, Peter, Paul and Mary, and whatever they would play during daily meal preparing. The way he would sync up the same playlist on Thanksgiving so that, when we would sit down, the same song would be playing that played last year. When my mom threw away my brother and I’s lite-brite right in front of our faces because we were fighting over it, he was doing the clown paper and I wanted to do a rainbow or something girly. Being the baby of the family so I got to stand on his shoulders and place the tie-dyed angel on top of the Christmas tree, all the way until I was, literally, 13 years old. Playing jokes on me, like telling me Kansas was black and white, or that hummingbirds fly so fast because they don’t have feet, or the time I was literally devastated at 14 finding out Santa wasn’t real because they would even go so far as to throwing half eaten carrots on the roof, you know, because the rain deer had been there. The constant road trips in the van that had in a dent in the side so it only opened from the outside. That one time my brothers and I puked because we stopped at a gas station that put too much syrup in their sodas. I was the only one who didn’t make it to throw up outside the car. The car stunk the rest of the trip. The outlandish car games we played, the one where we all gave ourselves strange names, Rainbow Unicorn being my own, and putting life stories to go with the name.
I worry constantly, they're always on the road, and especially after my mom said on that trip back from Ventura to see my ailing grandmother, ‘Shug, when he goes, I’m going with him, so be prepared for both of us to be gone at the same time’, of course referring to my father. That scared me so very much. All those trips to Hawaii I took with them after I was the only kid left in the house. They would go for a week first, and then I would join them, flying by myself. I would make myself sick and cry, thinking about how if my plane went down, I would never be able to tell them how much I loved them. I do this often. Sometimes, when I’m alone and you’re in the garage or at work or I’m trying to sleep, I think up your eulogies. What I would say if I had to. It makes me physically ill because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I don’t have them. I guess I just need to enjoy it. In high school, going through all the changes that my body went through, I half hated them, and the other half of the time, they were my best friends. I had hardly anyone in high school that understood my style or my music or my general angst, so I would always go to movies with them, or dinner with them, and we had so much goddamn fun. The cruise we went on to spread my paternal grandmother’s, Mary-Beth, ashes, I was 14 and I made their life hell. I have said so many mean things and I know it’s not what they remember, but it still bothers me. They told me it would one day, and they were right. The moments I catch myself saying something straight out my mother’s mouth, the way I call my friend’s by the wrong name, just like she would call me her sister’s names on accident, we never go straight, we always go forward, it drives me crazy, but I knew it would happen. It’s just how I grew up. I love it, and I think the reason I am so stunted when it comes to ‘growing up’ is because I wish I had taken advantage of what I had when I had it, and I wish I was still 11 and content and referring soccer games, or when I was really small and we would spend every weekend at Cherry Island, watching my parents referring, exploring that tiny bit of land, we were safe. Teaching me to love, teaching me to never except less then I deserve, to never except less then what they give each other every day.
My mom said to me the other day, “We weren’t perfect, we weren’t rich, but we tried to give you the best, we tried to have fun.” I guess this is my way of saying thank you, and I’m so happy to have what I have had. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
All the things I should have appreciated then. We never, EVER, did something I have ever heard of any other family doing. Eating dinner together EVERY night. Artichokes, once getting past the leafy exteriors, cutting up the hearts in perfect triangles, offering to the others at the table, ‘Would you like a piece of my heart?’. My dad choosing to ignore it when I would sneak my vegetables to my dad’s plate, he sat next to me nightly. He would always play drums on the sink in perfect rythym to Van Morrison, the Grateful Dead, Peter, Paul and Mary, and whatever they would play during daily meal preparing. The way he would sync up the same playlist on Thanksgiving so that, when we would sit down, the same song would be playing that played last year. When my mom threw away my brother and I’s lite-brite right in front of our faces because we were fighting over it, he was doing the clown paper and I wanted to do a rainbow or something girly. Being the baby of the family so I got to stand on his shoulders and place the tie-dyed angel on top of the Christmas tree, all the way until I was, literally, 13 years old. Playing jokes on me, like telling me Kansas was black and white, or that hummingbirds fly so fast because they don’t have feet, or the time I was literally devastated at 14 finding out Santa wasn’t real because they would even go so far as to throwing half eaten carrots on the roof, you know, because the rain deer had been there. The constant road trips in the van that had in a dent in the side so it only opened from the outside. That one time my brothers and I puked because we stopped at a gas station that put too much syrup in their sodas. I was the only one who didn’t make it to throw up outside the car. The car stunk the rest of the trip. The outlandish car games we played, the one where we all gave ourselves strange names, Rainbow Unicorn being my own, and putting life stories to go with the name.
I worry constantly, they're always on the road, and especially after my mom said on that trip back from Ventura to see my ailing grandmother, ‘Shug, when he goes, I’m going with him, so be prepared for both of us to be gone at the same time’, of course referring to my father. That scared me so very much. All those trips to Hawaii I took with them after I was the only kid left in the house. They would go for a week first, and then I would join them, flying by myself. I would make myself sick and cry, thinking about how if my plane went down, I would never be able to tell them how much I loved them. I do this often. Sometimes, when I’m alone and you’re in the garage or at work or I’m trying to sleep, I think up your eulogies. What I would say if I had to. It makes me physically ill because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I don’t have them. I guess I just need to enjoy it. In high school, going through all the changes that my body went through, I half hated them, and the other half of the time, they were my best friends. I had hardly anyone in high school that understood my style or my music or my general angst, so I would always go to movies with them, or dinner with them, and we had so much goddamn fun. The cruise we went on to spread my paternal grandmother’s, Mary-Beth, ashes, I was 14 and I made their life hell. I have said so many mean things and I know it’s not what they remember, but it still bothers me. They told me it would one day, and they were right. The moments I catch myself saying something straight out my mother’s mouth, the way I call my friend’s by the wrong name, just like she would call me her sister’s names on accident, we never go straight, we always go forward, it drives me crazy, but I knew it would happen. It’s just how I grew up. I love it, and I think the reason I am so stunted when it comes to ‘growing up’ is because I wish I had taken advantage of what I had when I had it, and I wish I was still 11 and content and referring soccer games, or when I was really small and we would spend every weekend at Cherry Island, watching my parents referring, exploring that tiny bit of land, we were safe. Teaching me to love, teaching me to never except less then I deserve, to never except less then what they give each other every day.
My mom said to me the other day, “We weren’t perfect, we weren’t rich, but we tried to give you the best, we tried to have fun.” I guess this is my way of saying thank you, and I’m so happy to have what I have had. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.