2019 In Memoriam (or, "The Prettiest Ponytail and the Loveliest Lie")
There are more than 31 million seconds in a year. Most you don’t remember. But some you do. Maybe you don’t know why. They seemed normal, average, off-white. But later, when you hold them up, and if the sunlight hits them just right, it turns out they’re gold.
Falaj al-Harth, Oman; Dec 2019
April 25… late afternoon, Hunters Woods Elementary School. I’m waiting by the flagpole for Violet, we’re walking home together today. The flag is droopy, everything is still, like we’re all on pause on this normal, anonymous Thursday. Now here come the little kids, spilling out of the school, all backpacks and noise and bad breath. There’s Violet, I see her inside through the windows to the 1st grade hallway, bobbing up and down as she walks. She glances absently outside, I see her notice me, see a smile flash across her face, see her steps quicken toward the school front door. Then she’s beside me, chattering, we’re ambling home together, she chatters some more, I chatter back. I don’t remember most of what we said. I just remember her hair in a ponytail with two scrunchies, one at the base and one at the end of the ponytail. She asks if I like it. I tell her the truth. It’s the prettiest ponytail I’ve ever seen.
Violet (Reston, Virginina; Jun 2019)
December 2… mid-afternoon, gymnastics lessons, Abu Dhabi. Grace loves gymnastics. There’s a gym in Abu Dhabi that offers serious gymnastics lessons. Russian instructors. Intense Russian instructors. Once, I saw one of the instructors walk right into an iron crossbar while looking at her phone too intently. Smashed her forehead, hard. She staggered back a step, shook her head a little, glanced back and saw me watching, gave me a quick, wry smile, and went right back to walking and texting at the same time.
The Russian instructors sort of speak English. They call Grace “American.” Grace is okay with that. She doesn’t know about the Cold War. Today, the girls are trying handsprings for the first time. I’m reading a book in the bleachers. I look up for a second. Grace is sprinting down the runway for her very first attempt, she tumbles forward, plants her hands, flips, her body is a blur for a split second. Then, suddenly and inexplicably, she’s on her feet. She’s standing there, completely bewildered by what just happened, by the fact that she landed the handspring. Then you can see her mind catch up with events, her eyes widen, her face explodes into a wild smile, she throws her arms in the air like an Olympian. Pure, spontaneous joy. The other girls gasp and clap, just as surprised as Grace. Even the stoic instructor grudgingly admits, in a thick Russian accent, “Good job, American.” Grace turns and scans the bleachers to see if I saw. I’m holding a thumbs-up sign high in the air. Somehow, her smile gets bigger. Somehow, my heart gets bigger. How can that be? I don’t know. It just is.
Grace (Bali, Indonesia; Nov 2019)
February 8… 7:30 am, Foggy Bottom metro station. I just worked an overnight shift, I’m loping down the sidewalk against the flow of morning commuters rushing the opposite direction, staring at the ground. Today the sky is low, the color of cold iron. And I’m tired, there’s a hole behind my eyes, everything looks headache gray. At the metro stop I expect to find it typically loud, somebody playing drums too hard or shouting to sell something.
But today is different. A young woman stands alone in the cold with a guitar and a little amp, she’s coaxing out a simple rhythm, lightly slapping the strings to keep the beat. She sings warm, low, steady. I think of summer honey. “Whenever you’re in trouble, stand by me,” she says. There are people everywhere, hustling past, heads down, earbuds in, as far away from where they actually are as they can get. “I won’t be afraid just as long as you stand by me.” I walk a little slower, then stop. I wonder where everyone is going, and why they’re going alone. Winter ages another moment closer to dying. I miss my train, and there’s nothing really wrong with that.
Halen (Gunlock Lake, Utah; Aug 2019)
August 21… evening golden hour, in a plane somewhere between Amsterdam and Abu Dhabi. I don’t know how long we’ve been traveling, the time zones and continents and oceans and seas are jumbled now in my foggy brain. But it’s the same sun streaming through the airplane windows now as the one that washed over us when we pulled into the Las Vegas airport dozens of hours ago. The same sun. It kisses us all. That’s comforting somehow.
The video screen in front of me is blank, most of the plane is dozing. The cabin glows summer gold. It must be seven or eight pm outside. Grace is fast asleep, draped across my right leg, Halen is fast asleep, draped across my left leg. They’re big now, skin stretched across long bones and tough sinews.
A long time ago I held Halen on a long-haul airplane like this one. He was round and small and squirmy, soft toddler hair and mischief in his eyes. I remember wrestling with him in the aisle while he fussed, the hours seemed endless, I remember I wished he were older. Now I look down and he’s older. My wish came true. But it was an ugly wish, and I’d take it back if I could. I feel his body rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall. That’s the way it is. Maybe breathing is just a microcosm of living. You rise and you fall, then you rise again. It’s a beautiful rhythm.
We are flying through a golden sky. Maybe that’s a microcosm of living, too.
Savannah (St. George, Utah; Aug 2019)
February 6… mid-morning, South Lakes High School. Savannah meets me at the entrance to the school. Other students flow past us, cacaphonous movement. I think, she can’t be sixteen already, but she is. Sometimes I see my face in hers and I wonder what that means. I don’t know. There is so much that I don’t know.
I hand over a book she accidentally left at home, she takes it and hugs me, it’s quick and natural, it doesn’t mean anything except everything in the world. She smiles and walks away down the wide hallway, blending in with the stream of time and people. She calls over her shoulder, “I love you dad!” I find I’m standing there unconsciously touching my heart.
July 28… noon, Reston, Virginia. The neighborhood is leafy and quiet when I pull into the driveway after church. Sun and birdsong. Shannon and the kids are gone, whisked west on an airplane weeks ago, leaving me in an empty, yawning house that has to tolerate me and a couple suitcases for another week until I too leave this all behind. Always leaving things behind.
On a whim I walk into the backyard, see the wood play set, see the deck, the woods. The sigh of warm air swelling, settling, stumbling over itself, blue gauze strips of sky through the trees. The shimmer of grass growing, my pulse in my ears, the sound of everything changing.
I have come apart over the past few years. Crumbled under weight I don’t understand into pieces that don’t even look like me. There is disbelief and shame in picking gingerly through a pile of yourself, looking for something you recognize. Putting myself back together has been like unbreaking a promise. When you’re done it might be something, but it’s not a promise anymore. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe I was an empty promise anyhow. I’d rather be a lovely lie than an empty promise. But, if I’m honest, I don’t want to be a lie.
I think how the backyard, the sun and the birdsong, that’s not a lie. And I’m standing here in it. That’s not a lie either. And I’m suddenly overwhelmed with a cloudburst of a sensation, that this has been a good year. And the year before that. And the year before that too. And so on. And I remember things. My kids smiling, their laughter, their embraces like little halos, the brush of their arms as they walk beside me in the forest out behind the house, the smell of Shannon.
Sometimes I don’t see all this beauty. I only see the grief I feel for my failures, my inadequacies. All those useless things, half-truths that are as good as lies. What do they get you? A hole in the ground and a slab of stone that says you used to be alive, you used to be good? But I’m here now in all the beauty. I’m not a half-truth and I’m not a lie. I’m okay, maybe even better than okay. I will struggle forever to consistently believe that, but at least for a moment in the sun and the birdsong, I know it. That’s enough.
