Telling Stories

I know this chair so well I saw it last night as I drifted off to sleep. The little fray of tan and burgundy fabric right where the wood—I almost said bone—of the chair, pokes through. I saw myself contributing to its demise, inadvertently pulling and picking at a loose thread. . . . You always smile warmly at me as you greet me in the waiting room where I am nervously rehearsing to myself what I need to talk about that day, waiting for you to say, “Please come through.” Please come through. Through what? I’ve already come through another week just to get here. Do you know what I go through to get here? . . . and when I ask you what I am missing, what’s the next verse, you say something less than profound, “I can’t tell you what you’re missing. If I knew and you knew, you wouldn’t be here.” I am here because I don’t know who I am anymore. I rarely go out. I feel like I am slipping into middle age without ever having been a young person.
I was eight. Sick in bed with measles or chicken pox, one of those childhood diseases. The rash swept down from my neck, across my chest, and down onto my legs. Hoards of rampant invaders. I kind of looked at the red spots as doing battle on my skin. Mom’s hands pressed into my back as she held me up, forcing me to drink water, more cold water. From the kitchen I heard grunts as she chipped cubes of ice, dropping them into a cup. She had me suck on ice. For a week I ate nothing but Jell-O and brothy soups and lots of chipped ice.
“Jimmy. Jimmy,” she comforted me. We sat snuggled together watching television. I also remember not so much watching television as lying with my head in her lap more or less asleep while she watched her soaps.
I reflect back on this now in answer to this invitation to explore the roots of my career choice. My wife would tell you that I became a psychologist in order to taunt her. In truth the radical decision lay in my childhood.
I could go into detail about how for an hour every afternoon while I was sick I slept with my head in my mother’s lap while she took her afternoon break from the tedium of housework to watch her soaps. Her favorites were The Guiding Light and The Edge of Night, and I believe these hours with my mother formed the defining moments in why I chose to be a psychologist. These were moments of proper nurturing and attachment—all the stuff that goes into the dream of a perfect childhood. . . . She always had a tin of cookies on the counter. She’d let me pick out my pencil box and my tin lunch box. I might even have my Flash Gordon lunch box tucked away in the attic. Good stuff. Those days. So I could look back and see that I was a textbook case of how proper and adequate bonding and attachment led to a content childhood and a successful adulthood.
From So Many Sentences


The first time I saw him was June 20th. I remember. It was the day school let out for the summer, the day I’d been looking forward to since Easter. It was after supper, well after supper, like around nine o’clock. I’d gone out to see Dad drive the tractor in. I had to scare the chickens out of the way. The one’s I couldn’t, I had to clean up. That probably sounds gross, but I’d been doing it ever since I was five so by now I’m used to it. That was my job, Dad said, to watch the chickens. They run all over the place, dotting the yard with their feathers. Looks kinda pretty, all white against the brown dirt. Sometimes when I’m not thinking, almost looks like a dusting of snow. The chickens are stupid. They run all over the place. You’d think they’d get out of the way when a big tractor comes at them. Not those chickens. They go all crazy and walk right into the tractor.
From Summer Seraphim

El---
Hello! Dear friend. Being of Irish descent and of alcoholic persuasion, I could not resist your hospitable offer of a beer. Merci Beaucoups, mon amie. Actually, this offers me a good opportunity to fortify myself—and dull my senses—for a long night of monotony at the RATS and Science Center.
The atmosphere in your apartment is so serene that I may hole myself up here till your return. A modern version of Walden Pond. I’ll just let the faucet run and pretend. Or perhaps I could try my hand at painting. I think the scene out your left window could make a marvelous impressionistic study of 20th century America (or as Rene would have it, 21st century). After all, the Left Bank is not the only place suitable for painting. Wait. Aren’t we on the Left Bank of the Nashua River? Don’t mind my aimless babbling—this time written rather than spoken. Writing helps assuage my conscience for drinking alone.
I’ve been having a wonderful conversation with your plants. Mostly one-sided I must admit. They persist in maintaining a rather dignified silence. Undoubtedly, they are under the impression that I—a renowned pseudo-intellectual—am far below their intellectual caliber. Please remedy the situation upon your return. How is the summer teaching?
From Sturm und Drang

Mom, you are with me always. I’d come visit—I’d make my way back to the weather-softened slopes of the mountains that are really no more than big hills. Still, they are New Jersey’s highest peaks. It is my childhood home. I could stand on the quartz and granite mound under the sugar maple trees that burn up in the fall. I could fall like winter ashes into your lap. Crows fly overhead. We’d both be in roles long unfamiliar to us. Why is it that to go home is always to go back in time? When I was a kid, I’d look up into the stars, trace out the serpent and Cassiopeia. In winter I’d contemplate Orion and his dog. I am looking back into time. That is what it would mean to go home. I’d want to find something that isn’t there. You’d want a daughter who I am not. In silence we can reach each other, can’t we? We have letters. We share memories.

From Esmerelda’s Wings