—
I wonder at the mystery of memory. That selective process that sorts through the pages of my life, haphazardly editing events I will remember for all time and those that will be lost forever. There are some memories that are fluid and changing, dreams floating to the surface of my mind making me question their reliability, their substantive proof of lives once lived.
Other memories stand firm and strong against passing days. They mark themselves unmovable and I know those crisp images and remembered thoughts will be with me to my dying breath.
◊♦◊
I am three years old, and my mother pushes against my back as I sit on the wooden plank hanging by a thick rope from the giant oak tree in our backyard. Beneath me is a pile of crisp autumn leaves that have been raked and piled high; red, brown and gold mingled together into one glorious mound. I am wearing a yellow dress and I streak through the air as I fly. When I land, softly, safely, the aromas of fall surround me and make me sneeze. My mother’s laugh passes through the air to my ears and I know I am loved.
◊♦◊
I am ten, and an angry woman—red in the face with a mustard stain on her blouse—insists that I, a poor girl from a small Appalachian town, could not have beaten her son at the academic meet. I look down at my scuffed leather Buster Browns and my eyes sting from the effort to not cry. She demands a recount, they grant her one, and I realize for the first time that life isn’t always fair, that sometimes money trumps decency and hard work.
◊♦◊
I am fourteen, and my uncle brings a giant present wrapped in blue paper with tiny snowmen scattered across the package. My fingers itch to untie the gold bow and look at the contents within but I resist, knowing it is from my father and that I want nothing from him. It has been two years since I have seen him and suffered his nighttime visits to my bed. He has taken more from me than he could ever give. I run out the front door letting its heaviness slam against the wooden frame. Wet snowflakes circle around me, clinging to my black hair before melting, reminding me that in coldness, there is beauty and that some things—even pain—are meant to be temporary.
◊♦◊
It is nearing the end of my senior year of high school, and I’m in love. For months, my prom dress has been hanging by a hook near my bedroom window. It flows nearly to the floor and the silver threaded flowers dazzle against the white silk of its length. In underskirt and heels, I sit at my dressing table carefully applying my make-up. I line my green eyes with black, careful to smudge it just right so that my already large eyes will appear nearly twice their size. I take out a tube of bright red lipstick from its package and carefully apply it making sure to accent my pouty bottom lip. I smile in the mirror and think about the upcoming night.
Stepping out of my friend’s rusted black sedan, I look up at our school gymnasium where he stands waiting, and I am excited to see him. He came into my life when I most needed him. He fought against those at school who wished me harm and claimed me as his. He held my hand as we walked the halls of our school that was sometimes a battlefield for those who were labeled as different. I knew we’d be together forever and tonight, at the hotel down the street, we will lie in each other’s arms and plan our future.
This is how I will always remember him: The black fabric of his jacket spread tight across his broad shoulders contrasting beautifully with his starched white shirt. Shiny small pearl buttons march down the center of his chest to meet with fitted slacks that accent his height. His tie has been skillfully fastened and his dark brown hair carefully smoothed back from his high forehead. Long dark lashes curl up and I find myself envious of this surprisingly feminine characteristic on such a masculine man. Long straight nose meets a slender mouth that rests at a tilt and is complemented by a strong jaw and high cheekbones. He is beautiful.
◊♦◊
Nestled against the smooth fabric of his lapel is a single white rose with a small spray of baby’s breath. I want to reach out and breathe in that scent and rub the soft petals between my fingers but I am afraid I will ruin it. I look up from him, lying still in his coffin, and tell his grandfather, “He looks just like he did at prom.”
There he is in my memory: two men. One a stunning man-child who pulled me close to him on the dance floor and planted kisses along my neck whispering about love and life and sex as I melt against him and know I am completely his. The other, older, but not nearly old enough, still and quiet, no longer mine; no longer anyone’s. They stand next to each other and I want to scream, lie upon the cold white tiled floor, thrashing and howling.
I want to run backward through time and grab hold that young couple laughing with friends who are marveling how the high school gym has been transformed with crepe paper and votive candles. I want to tell them to cherish each moment. I wonder if they would listen. If not I would rush ahead a few years and tell him, that boy turned man too soon, that it is okay that we didn’t stay together, that having our daughter was one of the most beautiful gifts I could have ever been given. I want to run up to that dark lonely trailer porch the night it all happened and take the rope from his hands, pull him into my arms and tell him that life is worth living; but I don’t and know that I can’t.
I picture him there, alone and feeling beyond choice. He has spent the day toiling at work and came home to hug his grandmother and tell his granddad that he is loved. He sits at the table in his room contemplating all those things that have passed and pens a letter to his family and another to his little girl. He hopes his words will explain it all, bring comfort to those he is abandoning. At night he slips silently out the door and across the street to his great grandmother’s back porch, careful to not make a sound. In the morning they find him beneath the broken beam still in his work clothes. His words do not explain it, and they bring no comfort, the feeling of abandonment will last for years if not forever.
I want to erase that man in the coffin and remember only the boy at prom.
I can’t, though, so I console our daughter he left behind. Explain that he loved her and that she wasn’t a mistake. I pull her body close to me, just as he once did mine, and whisper in her ear about love and life and death as she melts against me and her tears run down my neck.
Time is fading her memory and she says she can no longer remember his laugh, what he looked like when the sun was in his eyes or the feel of his embrace. I try to help her, to replace these holes of hers with something substantial instead; only I too find I am forgetting and have empty spaces where his face was once kept.
But I do recall the small grove of Eastern White Pines across the street from his grandparent’s bright blue painted house. How the trees formed a small barren circle that light could not touch and whose thick hanging branches sheltered all from sight. We hid there, he and I, on a bed of dried needles breathing in the scent of Christmas as our bodies made promises our youthful hearts could not keep.
I remember riding in our friend’s old maroon and grey Ford Areostar. How the boys would open the side door and hang their feet out while we drove along the mountain roads taking them home after a long day at school. My girlfriends and I would cling to each other in the back, swinging back and forth from laughter at their antics and screams of terror when we rounded too tight of a curve and thought we had lost them all. He would eventually abandon his friends to come sit beside me and make me forget all about the dangers and think only of the safety of his arms.
Time is a thief, though, and the details of his hands escape me. The feel of his solid muscles beneath tanned skin refuses to return to my fingers. I conjure moments through time but cannot place him firmly before me. The preservation of his voice has long escaped me and I know I would no longer recognize it.
◊♦◊
We have lost fathers, I by choice, she by circumstance. I am envious for my daughter of the girl who was able to deny her father’s present. Our daughter will never have that privilege and for that I am angry. I am furious that she will never know who her father would become. I long for those lost stories and car rides, empty promises and triumphant surprises which should have been hers. There are so many memories that could have been made the disapproving eyes of a father on her first date, a long hug on the day of her wedding all lost to a winter night long before she was old enough to claim any for her own. I could never have those things with my father but she could have with hers. He took away her future while trying to erase his past.
The red fabric of her dress spreads tight over her slender shoulders contrasting beautifully with the white silk bow tied carefully at her waist. Tiny metal stars dazzle around the hem of its short length showing off long legs and a height most girls only dream of. Her hair is piled in soft dark brown ringlets on the top of her head fastened carefully with a silver clasp. Long, dark lashes curl up from blue eyes and I marvel at their beauty as her make-up has made them seem twice their size. Straight nose meets a full pouty mouth accented with red that rests at a tilt and compliments her feminine tiny pointed chin and high cheekbones. She is the best of us.
Nestled against the smooth pale skin of her wrist is a single red rose with a small spray of baby’s breath. I reach out and breathe in its scent and rub the soft fabric of her dress between my fingers knowing how special this night is for her. I look up at her full of excitement for the coming night, memories that will be made at prom and say, “I wish your father could see you.”
—
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join like-minded individuals in The Good Men Project Premium Community.
◊♦◊
◊♦◊
Get the best stories from The Good Men Project delivered straight to your inbox, here.
◊♦◊
◊♦◊
Sign up for our Writing Prompts email to receive writing inspiration in your inbox twice per week.
♦◊♦
We have pioneered the largest worldwide conversation about what it means to be a good man in the 21st century. Your support of our work is inspiring and invaluable.
The Good Men Project is an Amazon.com affiliate. If you shop via THIS LINK, we will get a small commission and you will be supporting our Mission while still getting the quality products you would have purchased, anyway! Thank you for your continued support!
—
Photo credit: Getty Images