The contest was to describe one of your "screw-ups."
I don't have "regrets" per se... but I've definitely screwed up... It's something i did ALOT as a child, in comparison to the now. I guess you could say it's an inevitable learning experience - the cause of some very significant growing pains.
Anyways, here is the one screw-up that always seems to scream... (and thus my contest entry)...
A winter evening - blackish skies by six o'clock. Frost over the windows. My lips chapped and dry - my body carrying that extra winter weight. Soft, but kind of awkward.
I had been home from first year University for Christmas holidays and I was just stoked to see my best friends from high school, and a boy I was still crushing on since prom. Friends and fun were pretty much the only things on my mind... that I allowed to be on my mind anyway.
It was around 10 pm when my friend Sarah and I were packing up our skates and sticks to meet the boys at the pond to play a little midnight pond hockey - dressed all puck-bunny and ready to get my flirt on. My mom (who had cancer for the second time) thought I was nuts going out so late in the cold night to skate around on dangerous thin ice - wet and melting. To her, I thought, she was just for-seeing my runny nose, and my constant complaining about a head-cold, and sore feet
My mom yelled at me to stay home - she wanted to talk. I yelled back. I wasn't going to let her get in the way of any potential I had with seeing Riley again. I was determined to have an amazing Christmas - a holiday to remember.
So I cut her off, and stormed out the door with my skates slung over my shoulder and my coat barely done up.
I arrived home at around 2 to a quiet, dark house. I creeped down the hall toward my bedroom, trying not to cause a stir and wake my parents. Inside my bedroom I found my mother curled up in my bed - she had been complaining earlier that her own bed smelled of my father's cigarette smoke - the stench of Players Light embedded in the sheets which irritated her - choked her. I tried my best not to make a sound as I changed out of my clothes and into my pjs, when I noticed the tear on her cheek. Silent tears in the dark blue glow from the moon, seeping into my room from a crack in the curtain.
My mother had been crying. I didn't know what to say. I slipped into the bed beside her and put my arm around her. I was hugging a crevice moon. She felt smaller, bonier than I had remembered. Her skin was cold but sweaty - clammy, really. We were silent for a long while and finally she whispered to me, "My baby. I miss my baby." And that's when this feeling overwhelmed me... I wanted that moment to last forever. I didn't want to ever move from that position. I wanted to hold onto her before she was taken away from me. I felt her heartbeat against my hand. I held her. I breathed her. I just knew this moment would end. End. End. End. Fuck the end.
The next afternoon I found her sitting at her closet. She pulled out an ice-blue dress and blazer she'd worn to my cousin's wedding in the summer. She told me this was the dress she wanted to wear at her funeral. And that was the moment she revealed her days were numbered. She just stopped responding to treatments. She wanted to tell me last night. She wanted to tell me when I was out playing hockey - playing hockey badly and flirting with boys who could give a fuck about my mind - my problems.
She wanted to tell me everything and that she had known since early November but didn't want to tell me then because she didn't want to trouble me while I was away at school. She didn't want me to go to the pond that night because she knew her days were numbered - and here I was spending every holiday night with friends... "friends..."
This is my screw-up. Yeah, I wish I'd been more perceptive, because after that night... it was just a downward spiral toward the end.
lo
1 comment:
hmm. it's interesting to hear you say you screwed up a lot as a child. as someone older than you, who knew you as a child, all i know and remember is someone who was pretty amazing all of the time. if i ever saw or knew of you 'screwing up', i would have then (and now) attributed it to the old 'that's part of life/growing up' philosophy.
in my rambling, i think i'm just trying to emphasize perspective. i think we have that tendency to view our own 'screw ups' more harshly. i also think that we have to recognize our youth for what it is - a real time of learning and discovery. yes, we eventually realize responsibility (even as youth) but we're still so inexperienced in life that we'd never get to be the people we are if we didn't screw up now and then.
i'm happy to hear you say you don't really have regrets because, with the life you lived, you shouldn't (not that i want to tell someone what to feel, but you're my sister so i feel i can get away with saying 'should' haha). and i hope this extends to you forgiving any 'screw up' and realizing that if we all knew then what we know now (in every case), we may or may not have acted as we did. but, that's the benefit of hindsight. life experiences are the benefit of living the moment.
i think the story you shared is beautiful. it's painful to read but it's so very real and touches something in me and i bet it touches something in a lot of people. maybe you dont need to hear this or you're not looking for it but i can say that our mom would never look at that night as a screw up. she would be so proud that you can write as you do and that you can reflect the way you reflect and recount a vivid memory that's now immortalized. it's how people keep living...
lotsa love always.
(you can delete my comment if you want - it was a bit of a long, rambling mess).
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