Who's to say where the wind will take you?

I'm sitting in the dark, on an old brass bed, in the guest room of my parents house, typing. This bed, like so many other things in this room, in this house, are touchstones of my youth. The bed was my bed for most of my childhood. Strangely familiar in unfamiliar surroundings. That's the way most things are here. They invoke so many memories from my past, yet they reside in a house that has never been my home. I've never lived here. But, this stuff - I've known it all my life.

There is a portrait on the wall to my left. From 1964. Mom is captured at the tender age of 23. So young, and beautiful. Behind me is a family photograph circa 1970. The pièce de résistance though, is a piece of art drawn by the 1st grade version of me, which Mom shellacked onto a tablet to hang on the wall for posterity. The assignment, which I can still recall, was to write a few things about 'your family' and underneath the story, you drew a picture of your home. What did I write so long ago?

I help my family.
I help my dad carry fire logs.
I have to help mow the lawn.
I love my family.
And thies is my home.
I do not have any brothers or sisters.

Two things strike me hard. Gut punch hard. The first is the fact that I screwed up the assignment. I'm not referring to the obvious typo of the word this (once a dipshit, always a dipshit.) I was supposed to end the writing portion of the project with the line, and this is my home. Then underneath that line I was supposed to draw my home. As you read, I did not do that. Instead, I had a last minute knee jerk reaction to tack on the fact that I'm an only child. Why. I don't remember. But, reading it now, alone, in the dark, as I hear my Mom cough in the other room - it is eerily prescient - so much so that goosebumps break out on my arm.

Then we have the second thing, which is far worse than a gut punch. It is more akin to a baseball bat to the mouth, that breaks teeth. There, in my crude drawing, behind my childhood home is a graveyard. It is quite unsettling to see a graveyard behind my childishly drawn home. In fact, my teacher was so disturbed that I drew a cemetery, that she phoned my parents. To this day, they laugh recalling this story, and the teacher's fear that I was obsessed with death. That I had serious emotional issues.

You see Dear Reader, what the teacher didn't understand, what she failed to grasp, was that I truly did live in a house that backed up against a cemetery. That at the tender age of 6, with my limited artistic ability, I was trying to be representational in my art. Just like I added that line about being an only child. I was and am, a realist, which is why I'm reading my Mom's medical reports, looking up terrible words. Bilateral metastases. Hypermetabolic activity. Mediastinum. Hilar lymph nodes. Ischium posterior. Necrosis.

Sitting alone, in the dark, on an old brass, in the guest room of my parents house, I can't help but wonder, can I help my family?

Until I BLOG again...Who's to say what it is will break you?