| As I walk the streets of Northglenn, talk my way into my childhood home and see the wall between my bedroom and my sister's has been removed, my mind drifts back to Texas. I know if the other me had lived out his life with Collette and child, shook the snow off of his booties, and settled in for a hot toddy with my stepfather, it would not have been enough. I'm too greedy.
Consider this: a moment in time. If we could choose one event in our lives to relive fully, what would it be? Would I be lost on my way home from second grade? No. Wrong story. Try this: It's a few days before Christmas in College Town, Texas. I live in a huge boarding house that is empty and so cold I can see my breath in the hallway. My first love turns off the gas heater in my room, we lock the door and set off walking uphill to her apartment with me luggng a tiny, black-and-white television. I'm growing a scraggly beard and she is the most beautiful woman in the world. We're broke college students in search of some central heat and a moment's comfort. That's my choice. One moment. I was young, alive and had not yet written a single story worth telling. I'll take it. Despite knowing that people are watching us walk away so that they can kick in the door to my house and rob me. Despite the certainty that this woman and I will hurt each other deeply and become strangers. Despite knowing the choice of this moment means my stepfather did indeed die. When his car spun out of control on that fateful stretch of Colorado highway, it did change me. Countless pebbles have since landed in the pond that is my life and so muddied the waters that those early years are hazy, dreamlike. I've often wondered what it would be like to turn the home movie that is my life on reverse and feel a pile of pebbles collect in my palm. Would I grip them tightly to my chest greedily to stave off the pain that is to come? No, I would fling the pebbles recklessly into the roiling soup and cherish the chaos of unpredictable, endless possibilities. Then I would grab a pen and write until my hands hurt, scribbling it all down for you. |