99: twelve
When I am ten, all I can think about is when I turn twelve. I have set this goal for myself and spend all my time thinking about it: When I am twelve. Not quite a teenager, which comes with such a heavy burden of expectations and assumed upheaval that it seems at most like a raw deal, but twelve! Twelve, a perfect number. I've long thought about this age as being something golden, but when pressed to explain why, I cannot give any good reason. Nothing changes when I'm twelve, and I know that. There's no way to get there faster either, and I know that too. But still I yearn and strain toward it.
I want the taste of it in my mouth, to say, "Because I'm twelve now," and have that be answer enough. I can feel it there in the untouchable space between now and then, pulling me forward. In the etiquette books my stepmother hands me at each holiday, they talk about confidence -- not something I lack, even when I'm ten -- and how it is expressed through body language: You lift your chin, and imagine your chest is being pulled along by a taut wire. That your heart is being pulled forward, toward your destination. Walk with determination, always as though you have a purpose in mind: "Because I am twelve, now."
"Because I'm ten," this means nothing. When I'm ten we move so often, around the American Southwest, that you can't even depend on it to mean a new school or new things. Twelve means a milestone, it means that time has passed, that I have lived twelve years on this planet. That is all it means. When I am ten, all I can think about is the future. I am unpleasantly surprised by the existence of even trivial responsibilities, often several times a day. I am unpredictable. Lazy at times and overly productive at others, creating imaginary worlds and cities and occupations. Whole lives.
Because I am ten, I am lonely, and because I am ten, I imagine that nobody else in the world is lonely, and because I am ten I imagine that when I do make friends it's only a coincidence, born out of mutual misery. I cannot imagine that my existence amounts to much, because I am ten, and assume that I vanish from the mental landscape of my fellows when I'm gone as quickly as they do from mine.
When I am ten, I am jealous of my parents for their musical talents. My mother is a lovely singer, my father an accomplished instrumentalist with his own mournfully lovely voice. I decide to join the school band, in order to better understand the musical notes and tablature that entrances them.
This is the beginning of mutual breakdown, in my relationship with the English horn -- sour spit smell of brass -- and with the Band teacher, a moustachioed man married to the school principal, who two hours a week made the trek to our small elementary school in order to be offended by our lack of talent and our associated lack of respect for him and for music as an abstract concept.
When I am ten, the selection of the English horn is a concrete and unforgettable signpost on the road to understanding the abstract concept of poverty. The decision to join Band, made in a split second, is accompanied by another, secretive decision: That I shall play the flute. Even so young, from Peter & The Wolf alone, I know there is something precious and a little too sweet about the flute. But it is gorgeous.
There is a weekend getaway when I'm five, to some mountain paradise, Durango or Cloudcroft: surprised by a hailstorm, tumbling down the dandelion hillside with my mother to escape, laughing all the way into a tourist shop. I choose for purchase a train engineer's cap to match my overalls, blue with white pinstripes, and cherish it until it is outgrown and passed along to a teddybear, who wears it proudly.
When the skies have cleared again, and the patrons and visitors have come back out into the square, grinning and laughing at each other about the sudden shifts in weather, my mother and I have lunch. Afterward, there is a man -- slim and beautiful, with hair to his shoulders -- leaning against a wall on the train station's porch, playing the flute. He reminds me, sharply and physically, of my most beloved television character, the young Toby from Unico In The Island Of Magic, who plays the flute sadly in the night, standing on branches before a wide moon, overpowered and controlled by his master Lord Kuruku, forced to summon animals to their doom. I am transfixed.
It is some measure of time before I regain my composure and move from blankly staring to an even more awkwardly pretended nonchalance, at which point I recognize the tune he is playing: "The Rose," one of my mother's most favorite songs. The coincidence, I believe, is profoundly meaningful; I squeeze my mother's hand so hard she jumps. I spend a few moments fantasizing that my mother will take her place beside him, and they will entertain the tourists for hours, singing song after song.
The poor young busker's hair blows in the quiet after-storm breeze, across his face; it is the most romantic moment of my life. I wonder if I am experiencing what they call a heart attack, which is to blame, I know, for the recent death of my mother's grandfather. When I am five, death sounds like a vacation to somewhere fantastic, which would be at this moment redundant, and so in some way, the pieces fit together. Some say love, it is a hunger, but no matter what age I only recognize it as a roaring, ripping, ecstasy of destruction. I don't know what I am feeling, looking at the boy with the flute, but I consider seriously and impassively that it could be the onset of death.
Realizing that my mother's attention is flagging, I commandeer some money from her and make a show of presenting it to the young man. He barely looks up, just nods and continues to play, and I lose something.
I want the taste of it in my mouth, to say, "Because I'm twelve now," and have that be answer enough. I can feel it there in the untouchable space between now and then, pulling me forward. In the etiquette books my stepmother hands me at each holiday, they talk about confidence -- not something I lack, even when I'm ten -- and how it is expressed through body language: You lift your chin, and imagine your chest is being pulled along by a taut wire. That your heart is being pulled forward, toward your destination. Walk with determination, always as though you have a purpose in mind: "Because I am twelve, now."
"Because I'm ten," this means nothing. When I'm ten we move so often, around the American Southwest, that you can't even depend on it to mean a new school or new things. Twelve means a milestone, it means that time has passed, that I have lived twelve years on this planet. That is all it means. When I am ten, all I can think about is the future. I am unpleasantly surprised by the existence of even trivial responsibilities, often several times a day. I am unpredictable. Lazy at times and overly productive at others, creating imaginary worlds and cities and occupations. Whole lives.
Because I am ten, I am lonely, and because I am ten, I imagine that nobody else in the world is lonely, and because I am ten I imagine that when I do make friends it's only a coincidence, born out of mutual misery. I cannot imagine that my existence amounts to much, because I am ten, and assume that I vanish from the mental landscape of my fellows when I'm gone as quickly as they do from mine.
When I am ten, I am jealous of my parents for their musical talents. My mother is a lovely singer, my father an accomplished instrumentalist with his own mournfully lovely voice. I decide to join the school band, in order to better understand the musical notes and tablature that entrances them.
This is the beginning of mutual breakdown, in my relationship with the English horn -- sour spit smell of brass -- and with the Band teacher, a moustachioed man married to the school principal, who two hours a week made the trek to our small elementary school in order to be offended by our lack of talent and our associated lack of respect for him and for music as an abstract concept.
When I am ten, the selection of the English horn is a concrete and unforgettable signpost on the road to understanding the abstract concept of poverty. The decision to join Band, made in a split second, is accompanied by another, secretive decision: That I shall play the flute. Even so young, from Peter & The Wolf alone, I know there is something precious and a little too sweet about the flute. But it is gorgeous.
There is a weekend getaway when I'm five, to some mountain paradise, Durango or Cloudcroft: surprised by a hailstorm, tumbling down the dandelion hillside with my mother to escape, laughing all the way into a tourist shop. I choose for purchase a train engineer's cap to match my overalls, blue with white pinstripes, and cherish it until it is outgrown and passed along to a teddybear, who wears it proudly.
When the skies have cleared again, and the patrons and visitors have come back out into the square, grinning and laughing at each other about the sudden shifts in weather, my mother and I have lunch. Afterward, there is a man -- slim and beautiful, with hair to his shoulders -- leaning against a wall on the train station's porch, playing the flute. He reminds me, sharply and physically, of my most beloved television character, the young Toby from Unico In The Island Of Magic, who plays the flute sadly in the night, standing on branches before a wide moon, overpowered and controlled by his master Lord Kuruku, forced to summon animals to their doom. I am transfixed.
It is some measure of time before I regain my composure and move from blankly staring to an even more awkwardly pretended nonchalance, at which point I recognize the tune he is playing: "The Rose," one of my mother's most favorite songs. The coincidence, I believe, is profoundly meaningful; I squeeze my mother's hand so hard she jumps. I spend a few moments fantasizing that my mother will take her place beside him, and they will entertain the tourists for hours, singing song after song.
The poor young busker's hair blows in the quiet after-storm breeze, across his face; it is the most romantic moment of my life. I wonder if I am experiencing what they call a heart attack, which is to blame, I know, for the recent death of my mother's grandfather. When I am five, death sounds like a vacation to somewhere fantastic, which would be at this moment redundant, and so in some way, the pieces fit together. Some say love, it is a hunger, but no matter what age I only recognize it as a roaring, ripping, ecstasy of destruction. I don't know what I am feeling, looking at the boy with the flute, but I consider seriously and impassively that it could be the onset of death.
Realizing that my mother's attention is flagging, I commandeer some money from her and make a show of presenting it to the young man. He barely looks up, just nods and continues to play, and I lose something.