Late Nights Part II

 I debated the transfer for months. When I went home for the holiday break, I almost didn't come back for the next semester. Learning how bad things were over the phone was nothing compared to having to see it. When I came home, the Christmas tree wasn't up. The house was in shambles--like a gypsy camp. My father and brothers were eating fast food every night, while my mother ate only ice cream because there was no other food in the house. We all got a handful of cash for Christmas that year, because Mom couldn't get out of bed to shop and Dad was too tired trying to keep up with everything else. As a little girl, I'd developed a thick skin when something like this happened, but my brothers never had. As I watched them struggle in their public lives because of their home life, I couldn't even fathom leaving at the end of break to start winter semester, let alone going back next year. 

I explained this all to my friend, and with a tone that told me he both did and didn't want to know he asked "So are you going to be here next year?" 

"Yes," I told him. "I'm not going anywhere." I think it was the first time I'd said it out loud. At least, it was the first time it felt real, the first time the decision settled with me right.  

That was when he asked me how it had all started--my mother's illnesses. Our friendship was a pretty young one. We were steadily attempting to make up for it as quickly as we could with long conversations about every subject we fancied. I'd asked him questions like "What's your favorite dinosaur" and "What's your favorite childhood memory?" So many questions I'd asked him, and he'd been so good to answer. When our friendship got stronger, I stopped asking questions. I wanted him to share things because he wanted to tell me and trusted me, not because I'd asked. I'm not the same way. I hide much and give up little. There are some things I'll only share if you ask. And he asked me this one thing, and I couldn't tell him. It was a secret and it hurt. 

We decided to head back from our hike, and our conversation became light again. We were good at that. We never let a heavy conversation turn into an awkward moment. We chatted in our usual fashion, not forcing a subject but freeing it to the leisurely wanderings of whim. I felt particularly light-hearted as I walked back, prancing from stone to stone when we came to the rockier parts of the trail; and mirroring my mood in a dainty step and a bob of my shoulders. 

For the first time in months, I was finally starting to feel okay about my decision to stay. I knew that back home, Mom was doing better--not great, but good. I knew that my family would be okay. I knew that I loved being here and that there was a purpose to my position. I also knew that no one had ever asked me that question about my mom before. No one had ever cared enough to ask, and because of that, he deserved to know. 

"I think I'm ready to tell you about what happened to my mom now." And I did. I didn't cry. I didn't get upset. I didn't let the years of pain and disappointment and burden tell me I had to be sad about this. In that moment, it wasn't a secret that left scars. It was a fact. Simple and honest. I said it as if I were reciting a grocery list or remarking on the weather--not as if I was just giving up the family secret so hush-hush we pretended it didn't exist. 

I haven't told anyone since then, and I don't plan on it. I didn't get over it that day. I still get upset when I think about it. I still blame it for most of my problems. But at that moment, it didn't matter. At that time and place, it wasn't a secret anymore. Sure, it still hurts like hellfire; but at least I know that in some place and time, it doesn't exist that way. I may only carry that with me as a memory, intangible and flighty, but since then I've recreated and reincarnated it. As I relive it, the purpose of things becomes more clear, and I've just begun to connect the coincidences and understand their functions as parts towards a whole. And that's all I'm really getting at--being whole. 

Late Night Part I

This is what a memoir writing class will do to you: 

" If you don't mind my asking, what happened...? To your mom? How did it all start?" It startled me how carefully he asked it. He wasn't asking to pry, or out of curiosity. He asked because he genuinely cared. I sighed and looked out over the cliff where we were sitting at the murky river bobbing below us. 

"I don't know that I can tell you. It's not that I don't trust you, because I do. I've just never told anyone before, and I don't know that I could tell you without crying. I wouldn't want to make this situation awkward for you." But the thing was, I don't think we'd ever felt awkward around one another, and that was how we'd gotten on this subject. All my fronts came down when I was around him. I was so completely comfortable, there was almost nothing he couldn't get out of me if he really wanted to.

I thought back onto how we'd even gotten onto this subject. A series of questions had led me to tell him about my preparations to transfer earlier in the year. He'd asked me about something he'd read that I'd written, a series I titled "Stay," about my back-and-forth struggles to decide whether to remain at school or go home and finish my education there. 

"Earlier this year, I found out that my mother was really sick. My parents had been lying to me about how things were at home. My mother's always been really sick, ya know? She's had anything and everything: ulcers, bad kidneys, complications due to insomnia, sinus problems, sleep apnea..." I kept listing things off, all the things I could remember from 16 years worth illnesses piled in a decaying heap one on top of the other. She didn't have diseases or cancer, she just had a lot of everything else. 

"Growing up, I took care of myself a lot, because she couldn't. I had to do a lot of things children should never be burdened with. But we seemed to hold it together okay. We got through. We functioned. Not well, but we functioned." 

I looked out over the cliff at the blue mountains rising opposite us. Their tree-poked lines sloping through the gray-clouded sky. I couldn't get over how beautiful and perfect this day was. I could have missed this day, I thought. It wasn't until I actually thought that I would be transferring that I truly began to appreciate where I was. It wasn't until I thought I would be forced to leave that I didn't want to. I'd complained plenty of times that the mountains weren't like mountains at all--that they were like large hills, instead. I'd complained about the climate and the humidity. I hated that I could never see the sky because my location in the hills and all the trees were always obstructing my view. I didn't like that I couldn't see stars. 

And then one day, sometime in October, I realized that I may have to leave. It was during a phone conversation with my father that I found out. All phone conversations with my family are about the same. We talk about how church is going, how school is going, and what latest illness has Mom bedridden. So, when Dad had been telling me about Mom being ill, I didn't think it was anything different from what we'd experienced before. Except on this particular day, Dad let it slip that this time, it was different. It think I've subconsciously blocked out how this came about and what exactly was said. All I remember is that I felt my parents had lied to me. I felt they had played down the seriousness of my mother's current condition, because before this conversation, I wasn't concerned. Now, I was scared. And angry. I was angry at myself and my family. I thought How could they not tell me?  and I was angry with myself for abandoning my family. They needed me. Dad was trying to do it on his own. Neither of my brothers could or would help; and here I was, leaving them to fend for themselves. 

That's when I started making preparations to transfer. I'd go live at home and attend school at the nearest university. I'd go back to my old job and take care of Mom. It would almost be like high school all over again. 

I could hear the relief in my father's voice when I told him I'd filled out the transfer application, but I still struggled with the decision. Something told me to stay, but guilt made me want to leave. As I sat next to my friend on the mountain, I realized that I hadn't wanted to leave because of that very moment and what it meant to me--all the things it signified. When I thought about transferring, I suddenly didn't want to leave the landscape about which I'd previously complained, the landscape I was now witnessing. And I didn't want to leave the friendships I'd formed, especially the one with the person sitting next to me.