Date: 6/12/05
Climate: swimming in air
Reading: between the lines
Listening to: The Nurse Who Loved Me - A Perfect Circle(Failure cover)
Drinking: thanks, don't mind if I do
xbox: no not really
Summer Vacation
by Nathaniel Hawkwinde III
As a young whipper snapper I spent most of my formative years in the academy. There I was surrounded by my other privileged peers. We played like children did while sharing stories of trips to Greece, Hong Kong, and other exotic locations. We study but be boys as well. We would pull pranks on teachers like leaving gum on their seat and giggle when the professor sat in it. Each of us would go stone faced when threatened to be sent down to the headmasters office for punishment if he found out who did it. It was a very normal childhood I lived until Summer vacation time came. While my friends were sent away to camps and special trips to culture themselves, I went back home to my parents. In my early teens though, I would spend the Summer with my mother. At age 13 I was adept at making dirty martini's. Quite often in the evening my sister and I would hear her in her room, crying and pleading on the phone. It would not be unusual hours later to hear the sound of glass shattering on the marble floor of the foyer. We stayed tucked in our beds, allowing Javiar to clean up the mess. Soon the house would become too much for my mother and she would drag my sister and I away to the
french provincial for what she called, "a mental vacation." Sunning by the pool, she would seemingly watch me swim as I tried to carry on a normal life. Beckoning for me she would say, "Nathaniel," sweetly slurred with her arms wide out, "come here and tell mummy how much you love her." Pavlovian response makes me twitch at the sound now of pills in a bottle or the need to comfort smelling vodka and tears.
It was not always that way however. At 5 and 6 when I was there, my father would pull me into his study at night for story time. In there he would rest in the fainting chair(a piece of furniture I never questioned how it got it's name thanks to mother) and he would sit me in his lap, under the grand portrait of grandpapa. Smoking from his pipe he would tell me Greek tales of hero's and warriors. Fascinating tales of adventure. While it sparked this young boy's imagination my favorite story was of Persephone. She was beautiful and loved by all, even Hades wanted her. It's important to remember that Hades did not woo Persephone to him, he simply took her. This enraged and sorrowed Demeter who expressed it by punishing all of Earth inhabitants. Unless what was her's was returned to her, everyone would suffer. Hermes was sent to negotiate with Hades for her return. Hades agreed but gave Persephone a pommegrante seed to eat before she left which bound her to him and to the Underworld. Distraught at the trickery, Demeter resigned herself to letting her daughter go for part of the year, bringing about the cold and lonely, destructive season of Winter. My father, however, was more interested in the tales of Odysseus's travels. Stories of bravery, courage but also of weaknesses. Odysseus was famous for having too much pride and enjoying women too completely. He traveled the globe while his beautiful wife Penelope stayed at home, praying for her beloved husbands safe return.
One Summer evening at the age of 6, when my father was done reading the tale again he closed the book. I did not see or speak to him again until my 18th birthday.
*****
I am enjoying my mental vacation. As the time for work arises, however, I'll be stealing back my people.