My Hill

It was surprise. My parents thinking back on that time, were struggling financially. My father’s construction job left holes in our stability; weather and economic circumstances drove the need for his ingenuity. My mother worked fashioning furs taken from the captive exploitation of animals kept for their resource, regardless of their compliance.

The bicycle had been a dream I kept under my bed, as to let it out could only mean disappointment. That day changed my pessimistic realities of reality, into the supposition that impossibility is as much a state of mind, as never.

Birthdays were relegated to the acceptance, that although a year older, a single day had changed life’s prospects demonstrably. 

I remember that morning as if It had been the culmination of an experience designed to shake me from the morbidity of the gray laden skies. The previous evening had been ablaze with lighting accompanying an overture of the 1912 symphony; bombs bursting in air. 

The gutters had filled with water and the torn leaves of the cotton wood trees that line our yard. As the purple haze rose in the west, as the glimpse of sun emerged, I watched sailing ships emerge from their popsicle stick fantasy and race the turbulent waters to the grate that would take them to the high seas.

Dreams that emerge from the conflicts of battle returned to my wind driven landscape, to fight with the unseen villain and its revenge on my planet. A night that was too long, and not long enough, as I knew the coming day would bring engineered smiles and a disillusioned happiness that comes with disappointment.

It was not that I was without the necessities needed to adequately function in my world, it seems however at times we are burdened by what we don’t have. Want, more powerful than need, even if it is unattainable.

That morning as I mechanically went through the motions of pretending it was just another day, getting dressed, making my bed, I made my way down the hall towards the kitchen. I could smell the coffee, hear something frying. The wall paper along the hall that morning, seemed to exude a cautiousness I had not experienced before. Its swirling pattern reminded me of the previous evening and its convoluted sky, wind, and rain that seemed to fall up, as it defied the normalcy of ordinary.

As I stepped into the living room, the TV murmured its unheard words and unobserved pictures. The couch pillows had been fluffed, arranged with the perfunctory discretion of my mother’s hand.

The usual assortment of newspaper pages had been reduced to a neat pile that lay waiting, as if something was amiss and could only be put right if fate dismissed its outlook on change, or the need for it.

I made my way to the kitchen to find it empty of anything but steam whispering from the coffee maker, bacon spitting grease into the air like fireworks that forgot to reign its majesty upon the strips of pork that danced beneath it, as they plummeted dejectedly back from whence they came.

My place at the table, a division of authority, the pecking order that would remain viable until something was added or disappeared, to change the nature of why and where.

A note in my mother’s hand rested beside the empty juice glass, and the polished silver implements that guarded the sterile unadorned plate that was undistinguishable from its cousins, who sat stoically alone as the clock on the wall ticked off the seconds with the unabashed exuberance of failing batteries.

A wish was perfectly printed on the folded paper. “Happy Birthday,” the words, a visit from birthdays past, and those yet to come, jumping over my lack of enthusiasm for this new chapter in my life, and falling to rest beside the napkin that pretended it was made of linen.

Beneath, in small print necessary to examine more closely to visualize, was printed “Garage.” Having an imagination that belongs to someone with a modicum of dark expectancy, my thoughts turned to proven expectations. Cleaning out the garage? And on my birthday? 

Having a kitchen that condoned a small table and two chairs, if no one needed access to the refrigerator, and a dining room that was off limits; reserved for special occasions, Christmas, Easter, and funeral feasts, I envisioned the repeated inevitable.

The garage was often emptied of its resident and our unused ping pong table was resurrected to perform its perfunctory duty as a functioning serving platform for the traditional birthday brunch. It would be attended by grandparents, if they were not imprisoned by church activities, and cousins who had better things to do, but were only too aware it would soon be their turn to be subjected to the certainty of another year. 

I walked the converted green mile towards the garage knowing that although life was short, at times it felt interminably long and unnecessary. The door was open, its wooden façade resembling a half-asleep eye lid that had been forced onto the face of a garage. 

Expectation, or worse certainty, can be changed, usually by death, but then my prayers are rarely answered.

I turned into the opening, and there it was. My expectations vanquished to reside with the remnants of the previous nights storm, replaced by the miracle of surprise. 

It stood, 24 inches of the most beautiful display of paint, chrome, pedals, and a basket hanging profoundly out of place from the handlebars. “To carry your books,” the joyous noise coming from my father as he stepped through the side door, and stood hands on hips, cape less, as if there was nothing that couldn’t be achieved if one had a basket to calm the temperament of a speeding bullet.

My mother hugged me, my father messed up my hair, and I smiled that Cheshire grin I’d practiced for such an occasion. “Wow! A basket.”

Anticipation when dashed is forgivable, because we often know in the recess of our minds that somethings are not to be. But then when you see that it was a myth meant to temper the anxiety of accepting the unexpected, you realize the basket was meant in the same vain. It is a tangible example of practicality, awaiting the first pointed fingers and wide eyes of companions, who by assuming the role of companions are forbidden to be outwardly condescending. They indiscreetly turn their heads as if attempting to remember you, but can’t quite garner the history to conjure this?...whatever, from their past experiences.

Love and sacrifice are difficult concepts to understand until we reach a certain age where we’ve experienced an amount of failure and rejection, and realize life is not necessarily what we envisioned it would be, but then, we didn’t have to clean the garage.