Driving

There's one memory that sticks in my brain more spiritedly than all the others. Some might argue that the perception of an eleven year-old might lean towards inaccuracy, but I'll take my chances. The way I remember it, we were driving in my dad's 1992 white Chevrolet Impala after I had finished another demanding day in Mrs. McConnell's sixth grade classroom. I had, for days, been protesting the newly emerging pack of “popular” girls in my class. Of course, this protest always existed secretly, consisting only of complaints spewed into my father's open ears (definitely not within earshot of my classmates!) on our daily rides to and from the schools we both attended (mine, a catholic middle school; his, a catholic high school where he taught science). Today, though, he shifted his normally amused and condoning attitude to take a more challenging approach to my problems.

“I'm telling ya, dad! They all wear the same jeans, have the same hair, and they...they don't even let anyone who's not in their 'group' sit at their lunch table! And, they all hate school. And, they all like the same boys. It's like they don't even have their own personalities!”

To my classmates this claim may have seemed ironic, or even hypocritical, coming from the most timid and close-mouthed student, potentially exhibiting the least amount of “personality”. In my own head and to my father, as I imagined it, the statement seemed highly reasonable and perfectly accurate. He neglected to provide me with his usual chuckle or occasional response of “quit yer bitchin'”, his lighthearted and well-known comeback to any seemingly whiny comments that evoked a somewhat rebellious pleasure from my 11 year-old mind. Instead, he posed the question, “Well, if you aren't “popular”, what are you?”. At that point, along with every other eleven year-old, I wasn't completely sure.

But I was certain that the root of all my troubles at the time existed in one being, one adversary, one horrifying monster of a girl: Shelly Bobson. At least once a day, I found myself frantically picking up the pencil shavings that Shelly had dumped out on my desk just to aggravate my preference for perfection. Or on a good day, she would be content with blurting out a single comment about my unstylish attire. Regardless, I faked sick at least a dozen times because of her presence, and feigning illness in my family didn't mean anything pleasant. In any other house in our quaint, isolated, suburb-like city of St. Cloud, faking the flu or a sore throat meant hours of relaxing daytime television or your favorite movies, along with a fresh bowl of chicken noodle soup and unlimited parental pampering. In my particular home, having a sickness meant that you had the potential to spread that bug all over the house; since my mother ran a daycare, those germs had to be quarantined! So, I stayed isolated in my bed on those fateful days without entertainment or company, yelling advance notice in order to use the bathroom. Of course, I wasn't really sick and I wasn't tired enough to sleep, so I spent that time harboring my fear of Shelly and her followers.

I didn't only feign sickness for the sake of escaping “the monster”, as I tended to call Shelly in my own thoughts. There were other reasons, too, although to say that I played sick because my father was dying of cancer seems too simple.

Wooden Monkey Bars

Before I was eleven, I was seven. I was seven and she was eight and we were climbing on monkey bars. We were climbing on monkey bars because she was eight and I was seven and she was in charge. And she was in charge because her blond hair was short and her muscles were big and she had more words to say.

Then, one day, it switched. Now I was in charge, because when boys and girls taunted, “Are you a boy or a girl?”, she had less words to say and more muscles to hide.

The monkey bars were made of wood that gave us splinters, but we were pirates who were tough. We caught turtles with bare hands and screamed at the top of our lungs and laughed until we squirted Cherry Coke from our nostrils (pirate-style). Once, we used a bath towel and a knobby stick to save a squirrel from imminent death by drowning. We were pirates ransacking the day camp, plundering the backyard, and taking what minimal loot we could get our hands on.

Today, I am not seven and she is not eight. Her blond hair is long and her muscles are slim and men call her “beautiful” and “hot”. She is still in charge, though, the last time I checked.

Yellow Station Wagon

Before I was eleven, I was six. I was six and he was ten and we were playing hide-and-seek. We hid together in the back of a yellow station wagon because his muscles were big and his blond hair was short and he had a dad with even bigger muscles. He was in charge because I was six and he was ten and he knew the most. He knew the most about the thing that I didn't know about yet. He knew about the difference between boys and girls and he knew which part was supposed to go where. He knew the most about the part of me that he was in charge of in the yellow station wagon.

My mom and my dad and my brothers and my sister called the yellow station wagon “the banana”. Bananas are bright and yellow and long like the station wagon. Soon the station wagon started to get brown and aged, just like a banana, but I remembered its bright yellow color from the day we played hide-and-seek.

He and I played make-believe. I was Jasmine and he was Aladdin, but in the end he always got to keep the magic lamp and the flying carpet.

He is not ten anymore and I am not six. Just like his dad, he has big muscles and a big truck and he makes love to a woman who has long blond hair and golden skin, like the color of bananas, but deeper. She is in charge when she sticks out her bottom lip and bats her mascara eyelids, but mostly he is still in charge.

Twelve

After I was eleven, I was twelve all the way until I was eighteen. The day I turned twelve, there was a party. Everyone was invited, including: aunts and uncles, a girl from school, the neighbor's bichon frise, my mom's orthopedic doctor, the priest named Ed, my future high school librarian, and a myriad of trendy preteen t-shirts disguised as boxes with bows. Also invited was my father, lying in the hospice bed next to me. I pretended it was my real dad, not the one with so many brain tumors that he called the remote control “the chicken” out of confusion, and not the one who closely resembled the light-up skeletal system model that my biology major brother gave me for Christmas. I like to think that he was ecstatic to be given the opportunity to watch me come of age, for the brief moment he remembered it was me. He always wanted to make sure I would be okay, so I tried to be.

I tore open the mysterious boxes with bows to find several fashionable clothing items. The sparkling blue bow flew off the box- a fitted purple tee! The brown box with stripes came open- a striped colorful tee! The spotless little white box that was cute enough for no wrapping paper- a blue v-neck tee! The shiny, blinding gift bag- a simple white tee! Bows and boxes and bichon frises buried in boughten goods. It wasn't exactly what I had asked for, but how could I be angry about my upcoming days of improved fashion?

Tubes

The big van filled with 14 year-olds pulled into my driveway, and my neighbor came running. It was a funny sight to see, her graying hair bouncing up and down in sync with her small dog's floppy ears. I stopped giggling, though, when I saw the look on her face. “Your brother Phil is in the hospital”, she said. “I told your mom we'd drive you there.” So I hopped in the car, not really registering what she had just said, and we drove for an hour and a half in the red-orange leaves that signified the beginning of a new season.

I sat in the back, hearing muffled words that might have been directed towards me... “marathon”, “coma”, “heart stopped”, “feeding tube”... I silently repeated them over and over until my head was pounding so loudly that I couldn't hear them anymore. A tear grazed my cheek, but I only let one out.

We arrived at the hospital, and I quickly made my way through doctors, nurses, an old man carrying three Starbucks' Frappuccinos, and an incessant beeping noise, to find out if the rumors were true, or if I'd made them up. I found the waiting room, and it was stuffed to the brim with aunts and uncles, a girl from school, the neighbor's bichon frise, my mom's orthopedic doctor, the priest named Ed, my high school librarian, and a myriad of fruit baskets. My mom pointed towards the room down the hall, and I opened the door to find another brother, Dan, standing there. He was standing there, blocking me from something painful, and I thank god that I had that moment to breathe.

When he did step aside, I looked for Phil, but instead I saw miles and miles of tubes. Tubes weaving in and out, over and under, like the 'Wild Thing' roller coaster I had ridden just weeks before. Transparent tubes, red tubes, blue tubes, fat tubes, and skinny tubes. Tubes on top, tubes underneath, and tubes that seemed to have no end or beginning. I turned to Dan, perplexed, wondering where Phil was amidst all this plastic. He turned to hug me, sobbing, and I cried, too.

We made the waiting room of the ICU our home, and more fruit baskets were sent to us to decorate our new living space. After we'd had a thousand Frappuccinos, one leg amputation, two hundred games of rummy, and some greeting cards, we all packed up our stuff and went to our real houses.

A first try

We'd both had other lovers, but they were just for practice, I think. We didn't know it, but we were practicing for this very moment. You, in your fuzzy blue hat that I used to think was hiding something. Me, in who knows what (but wanting to take it off!). It was your suggestion, but I verified it with more enthusiasm than you'd anticipated . A mixtape (a cd, really, but let's be nostalgic here) that you made just for me, just for this, was playing in the background.

The stakes were high. We liked each other too much for this to go awry (that's why you made the mixtape). We might have been nervous. Maybe we were just way too thrilled to be with each other. Maybe I had too many images of being convinced to do something that made me uncomfortable; maybe you had too many memories of lovers wanting to do things that made you feel too powerful.

It started slowly, of course; our apprehension wouldn't allow us to be hasty. Soon, though, hands and feet and faces and elbows were linked so tightly that we couldn't disconnect (not that we would've wanted to). We were stuck, adhered together by our doubt and our hopefulness and our salty bodies. Our desires weren't limp, but other things were, and we barely even noticed it amidst the pinkish red bedsheets that, at first, made me think you might be gay. How wrong I was! And how happy I was to be there, stuck to you just as sweet as maple syrup on my lips at breakfast.

Buses

Of all the knowledge I've acquired in life, I've learned the most on buses. Greyhound buses, mostly, but sometimes city buses (the bus fee is in direct correlation with the amount of potential wisdom to be gained). I paid my fees to obtain all of this insight, so I didn't feel guilty about not giving back.

I met a man with dental problems. He was sitting in the seat behind me, and he desperately wanted to show me his tooth (or lack thereof). “Do you think I need to go to a dentist for this?”, he asked. He probably needed a dentist 10 years ago, so I said, “Yes, I think you might.” I wished I could've given him one of the 10 dentist appointments that I'd had in the past 10 years.

It was my first trip home in months. I had made my specialty chocolate chip cookies for the occasion, attempting to woo my family in hopes that they wouldn't forget me until the next time I came home. An older black woman was sitting next to me, and I offered her a delectable cookie of her choice. Ecstatic, she exclaimed, “Oh honey, I haven't had a homemade cookie in years!”. The enthusiasm spread through the bus, whispers drowning out other whispers, until eventually the box had reached everyone, and a single broken cookie remained. Everyone had a chance to try one, except for the college guy with his laptop and iPod.

We chose the back seat, right next to the bathrooms. We hadn't eaten in a while, but luckily, the man in front of us had a giant bag of Fire Cheetos to share. “I'm gonna ask my lady to marry me,” he told us. “Will you look at the ring, and make sure it's good enough?” I examined the specimen, worth $189.99 according to the price tag. “It's just perfect!” I exclaimed. “She'll love it”. Soon, he called her just to tell her that I had verified the opulence of the newly purchased symbol of their love.

On the buses, I saw college kids working their way up in the world, and black folks just trying to work their way through. I will graduate from college soon, and I've learned a lot from four years of reading scholarly articles, discussing theories, and writing my brilliant ideas down on paper. Maybe I will make money with my fancy degree, but I think I'll keep taking the buses.

Shapes

I compare all my lovers to my papa (in a purely platonic way, of course), but I didn't know this until I met you. You were on to me from the beginning, claiming that I fell in love with you because you're a teacher. “Tell me about your dad”, you would say. “I feel like I need to understand him to understand you.” You wanted to know him so badly, believing that this sacred knowledge would provide insight into my soul and would somehow allow you to dig your way into the tenderest spot in my heart. It is impossible for you to know him, just like it's impossible for me to know the man who shaped you at your earliest stage.

We can only rely on each other to relay the depth of character of each of our “shaping men”. And it's funny to think of how different they were- mine, a catholic school teacher from a small farm town; yours, a benevolent civil rights advocate who loved his grandkids- and how they shaped us into people who could get along so well.

You are an octagon, with too many sides for me to see at one glance. I turn you around and around and around, and I keep finding new sides, edges that I didn't know existed. I am a hexagon, and sometimes I hide in one of my corners where it's hard for you to find me. Together, usually, we are circles and spheres, rolling over and under and into each other with our soft borders and continuous lines. This is how we've been configured, thanks to those who have shaped us.