As I drive through Clinton on Rt. 10, the memories start slamming against the breaker wall and slosh over it, drenching my tired heart and mind with things I've forgotten. Mostly, I'm too tired to keep them in check today so I let them run free. I hated this place from the first day and plotted my escape weekly, not quite succeeding for six long years. Other than driving through on our way elsewhere, I've not been back for any extended time. The last time we met friends for lunch and walked the campus in the cold before driving to Mason City (I can barely say the name of that town even now- much less drive through it) to see my sister-in-law. I try not think about the hard things that happened in this place I grew up.
Remember the good times. Remember rollerskating around the chapel at night in the cold fall air until you wore the wheels out and couldn't find a store to replace them.
Remember waiting by the train tracks for the late afternoon train and screaming loudly as you ran along beside it.
Remember making out in the prayer rooms and in the music practice rooms because there was no place else to go if you didn't have a car.
Remember gathering around the big rock and listening to someone softly playing the guitar to the stars.
Remember Paco sitting in the tree yelling "Ola" to you as you walked underneath him.
Remember dancing in the downtown fountain on a Spring evening.
Remember...
Quickly, my mind goes back to the black time- to the time where I lost myself and nearly my life, to the friends who held me steady when my world shattered into tiny particles too small to pick up with a wet finger. All these years later, the ghosts flit by and I wonder if it's because I've never made sense of what happened or if it's because I have never wanted to let go and move on. And then I realize something very odd- something I never knew all these years, and I smile a tiny bit to myself. My smile fades as we approach Clinton.
In Clinton, we slow down to 25 as we pass James' childhood church. My best friend during the really bad time when I wouldn't eat and couldn't sleep, James would take me home to his mother and tell her to feed me while he did silly things to distract me and make me laugh. After night church, he'd kiss his mother goodbye and I would swear that I'd not go next time. I couldn't bear seeing him with his mom. It hurt too much. James is gone now. Things got very black for him while we were in New Mexico and he ended it. It doesn't seem fair that he prevented me from taking an action that he'd indulge in later and I frown as we pass a little white house that reminds me of his mother.
In town, I drive the girls by our first apartment and it's in horrible shape. I laugh and say I need to drive carefully while in town because I suspect that I still have parking tickets on record here. We go by the park with the fountain and I think about the fun things we did there and try not to let the black shadow creep back in.
On campus, it's the same mostly, but it feels different. Here, I think, is where I met Doug the day I missed my ride home and sobbed about it.
Here is where Phil lost his mind and took off running barefoot in two feet of snow and we couldn't find him for hours.
Here is where....
There is a blue bug in the parking lot, and I look twice. It's a much newer model, but it's in the same spot. The same spot where I slammed the door for the last time and he didn't say, "Don't slam the-" because we both knew it was the last time.
Here is the place we clopped coconuts together and galloped around the parking lot after seeing Monty Python.
Here is the place where the tall boy whose hands felt like he had no bones wanted to kiss me and got mad when I wouldn't let him. If James hadn't stepped between us, he might have hit me. His accusing words hurt enough and James took him aside and spoke softly. The boy frowned and mumbled an apology I knew he didn't mean and I ran away, believing every nasty thing he said about me was true. James knocked on my window that night and handed me a tupperware container of homemade cookies with a note from his mom with pretty flowers drawn on it.
"He didn't mean it," James said. I ignored him.
"Come out," James begged. Under the tree where I met James the day I ran over him while skating, James told me something he knew I didn't want to hear- something that would push me farther away from everyone.
"He set you up," James said. "The boy with the blue bug set you up. They're friends, you know." I knew. I knew James wasn't lying. I knew the boy with the blue bug was playing games I couldn't win and I knew that boy with no bones in his hands was a pawn, but I didn't know how James knew or why he cared so much.
Here is the place where the worms covered the sidewalk after the rain and I didn't want to go to class because I didn't want to step on them. There was no other choice- walk on pale, waterlogged worms or miss class. I cried as I took each step and when James saw my tear marked face and found out it was over worms, he bit back a laugh. He promised to give me a piggy back ride next time. And the next time it poured and flushed out the worms, James showed up at the door of my classroom, ready to carry me to wherever I needed to go.
Here is where Lex, my Zander, played the flute while I danced on skates in the moonlight and pretended to be crucified on the shadow of the cross on the ground. Zander was supposed to be training for Juillard, but in reality, it wasn't me distracting him as much as it was him running away from something that he never wanted. Zander played the flute for me every night for an entire semester and brought me new wheels for my skates when he came back from a competition in Chicago, having placed first but pale and dying inside. He hid his face in my lap as I read him the final chapter of Winnie the Pooh in which Christopher Robin grows up and leaves Pooh behind. I didn't see Zander for two days after that. He knocked on my door and I knew when I opened it that he'd never play for me again.
Dressed in orange spiritual robes, his head shaven, he kissed me goodbye and walked away, his slender fingers twisting in the air as if playing a farewell song for me by themselves, as if they regretted leaving me behind. I heard later that Zander pawned his expensive flute and left to pick apples in Oregon. I wasn't sure where Oregon was, but I knew Zander was gone forever. I tore the last chapter out of my book, pulled on my skates, and went to the Chapel sidewalk. I skated around it for hours, tearing piece after piece from the chapter and letting the wind carry it away. I must have cried, but I don't remember crying. I only remember the sensation of still being on skates when I finally stopped and it looked like snow where the pieces of paper fell.
James pulled up on his bike and sat next to me silently. I couldn't talk about Zander leaving. "Let's go for a ride," James finally said. Perched on the bar of his bike, James' warm arms protected me, as he sped around the chapel before darting down the long drive. I drive that stretch tonight and think I never knew until today how James felt about me, and I think he couldn't say for fear I'd walk away and shut him out. And he was right- I would have. I did anyway.
It feels funny telling the young student greeting us that I'm an Alumni here. Alumni doesn't begin to express the deep emotions this place evokes for me. This place I hated so much, where I spent some of the worst days of my life and some of my best, where I swore I'd not return and haven't given a penny to, where I met the man I still deeply love, where I met people who taught me how to love and how to feel.
It feels very funny to think of this child that I love like own daughter going to school here. I worry about her and halfheartedly tell her that there are better places for her, and then I realize that she can't see my shadows and ghosts. She only sees hope and her future here in the middle of the cornfields.
Me? We're not leaving until Friday. I have time to walk around and stare each ghost down, finding some sort of peace for the all the bad times here. So while she plans a future I pray is void of mind-game playing blue bug driving boys, and Zanders who love you but can't stay, I hope that she sees the James around her and appreciates them more than I did. And I think... I'll be here more often when she's here so maybe it'll lose some of its dark shadows for me.
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