It's GO Time

I just wanted to say that I straight-up give you all massive props for sharing parts of you - even though I'm definitely keeping your personal thoughts private, I wanted to let all of you who have posted so far know that I have found your narratives deeply moving and entertaining to read. So, to try and do one of my own:

Shapes that Look the Same

In a sudden decision to commit to something great, I found myself with only a few weeks to pack up my life, tie up some loose ends, and head eastward.

When I say “pack up my life,” I don’t mean to parrot the cheap sentimental cliché. When I say “pack up my life,” I really mean that – throwing my possessions into some boxes I found behind the Albertson’s. Moving out always means the sorting of “things to keep,” “things to donate,” and “things to toss,” being as detached and unfeeling as possible throughout. I mean “pack up my life” in the least hyperbolic sense, because I don’t have a home-base, a place where I can keep my extra clothes or can store my truck while I decide on the parking situation or can chill a few days between rent agreements. All I have at any given moment is whatever I could fit in my truck.

And when I say “tie up some loose ends,” I don’t mean that other cheap sentimental cliché. Well, maybe I do. I don’t believe in much, but I do believe in those Victorian concepts of closure and resolution. Or maybe they’re Aristotelian in form. Well, whatever the case may be, I’m pretty sure they didn’t have me in mind when they were making their decisions … but I’m getting off the point. Before putting thousands of miles between me and California, I knew that I had to make symbolic gestures of departure, concluding hanging story threads that have run throughout points of my life narrative – because if life isn’t just one long story, then I don’t know what it is.

Get drunk with first-year friends – check.
Have nice dinner with funhouse friends – check.
Make arrangements for safety deposit – check.
Resign membership to Finer Things Club – check.
Let momella know that I’m leaving …

I show up at my parents’ house late on Friday night. Really, it’s more Saturday morning. I spent the hours before my departure typing everything that came to mind, cursing myself with each passing jumble of words that I have to call a sentence. Why did I wait to do this until finals week? Why did Mother’s Day have to be this weekend? Can I ask for another extension? I even took thirty minutes at a trashy rest stop to read some poststructuralism by interior lamp light. Maybe I should turn around …

I wait outside the gate for several minutes, rummaging around the backseat of my truck in vain to find the gate clicker. I can just leave my truck outside … but I won’t be able to bring the box in. And I’m not sure how Nipper will like me hopping the fence. I wonder if he knows who I am. I find the clicker – the remote, the button, whatever you want to call it, I never really paid attention – in my glove compartment.

That being done, I find a place for my truck in the unpaved section of the yard. I’m not really sure where to park – my kid brother’s car blocks the driveway, but he’s off at college … and I don’t want to block in Momella’s suburban. At least I’m inside … I throw my truck into park and grab my duffle bag and a single box from the passenger seat. Luckily, Nipper doesn’t suspect anything’s amiss. I’m just another Asian body as I pass his sleepy yet watchful eyes into the garage.

Once in the garage, I’m greeted by something a little more like home – old fluorescent lights illuminating a locked door. I set down my bag and my box and wonder if my parents rely on their same tried and true logic. As I let my right hand search under the doormat for the spare house key, my left greets my old cat Daisy as she sniffs the box. Girl, you might be the only person happy to see me … When I finally find the key, I stop and wonder if Garfield’s right – do our pets really understand what goes on around them? I wonder if she secretly knows why her master never comes by these parts anymore.

I try sneaking soundlessly through the unlit house on a moonless night – it’s 30 steps from the back door to my room, yeah? Wandering with my eyes closed, imagining everything as I remembered it from the first seventeen years of my life. Six steps, turn right, go twelve through the kitchen and the dining room … I am almost led to believe as though my memory of this place is still as vivid as when I left.

Nope. My head bounces off a corner. Dammit, just five steps left … I hear rustling coming from the darkness – clearly, the sound was as loud as I had imagined and I had woken someone up. I brace myself – Momella or Dad? Or did Randy really never move out?

The hallway lights suddenly snap on and Momella, squinting her eyes as they adjust to the light, begins walking towards the scene of the accident. My first impulse is to run, to wave goodbye to the cat as I leap into my truck and to speed away as far as its four cylinders will allow. Abort mission, forget it, never mind. But I’m too busy rubbing the center of my forehead to actually do it.

“Oh, it’s you.”

“Hi! I came for the weekend. For Mother’s Day.”

“Sure. What’s in the box?”

“Oh, just some stuff. Like picture frames from college, gifts from my residents, knick-knacks from vacations and such. I was wondering if I could leave it here for a few weeks.”

“Well, if you leave it too long, I’m going to throw it in the shed. Or just throw it out. It doesn’t seem like you have important stuff in there.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. It’ll be just a few weeks.”

“Whatever. Don’t make too much noise or Dad will be pretty fucking pissed.”

“Fine. Good night.”

Momella walks away before the silence becomes too tense and the hallway darkens as soon as I make it to the guest room. I shut the door and rub around the walls in search of a light switch. Once I find it, I tentatively flip the switch with a feeling of unease at what I will find.

I take a long moment looking at the room that was once my own. Hasn’t been “my” room in seven years, though the start date of my exile from the house might have started long before. Yearbooks, trophies, plaques, and ribbons piled in a dusty corner by the bookshelf, half-filled with the yellowing pages of a few titles that I thumbed as a kid, dreaming of making it big with the Saturday Night Live band or getting my creds as a piano rocker or first chair of the L.A. Phil. I take a few steps toward the desk, weighed down by Momella’s newest computer, and run my fingers across the surface. Though it looks the same, it feels nothing like my desk, the completely smooth surface forgot the topography I built with cigarettes put out in haste, etchings of my latest tattoo, teenage vodka left to soak.

I rifle through my bag to look for my toothbrush when I realize that I forgot to bring another pair of jeans. I go to the dresser – which I grudgingly remember Gramps built for me – and see if any of my old clothes are still tucked away in any of its many drawers. Nope. I drove away with only what I could stuff in a suitcase – a large suitcase, but just one nonetheless … Where there were once ratty jeans, flannels, and torn T-Shirts was now Wranglers, Fruit of the Loom, and my kid brother’s forgotten love of all things Quiksilver. Nothing was where I left it.

Annoyed that I am doomed to be wearing the same jeans that I stained with roadtrip coffee the entire weekend, I suddenly remember my purpose. I tear open the closet and scan desperately for a place to put my box. If I can find a place on the floor, Momella’s dresses will cover it. Maybe I should bury this under some of those other boxes. Maybe I can give kid brother some pizza money to send it to me before she gets it …

The box? I call it my memory box. It doesn’t seem like you have important stuff in there. I don’t. Ever since the first time I successfully ran away – and the first time that they let me disappear – I’ve just been collecting memories. New memories. Overcome by nostalgia, I sit myself on the floor and begin sorting through the contents of my memory box. Old memories of the new me. A doortag from my first year dorm. A rock from that camping trip when we were still friends with Kevin. A hotel key card from that post-finals week party in Vegas junior year. A postcard I bought when I visited Sissy … I mean, Maria … in D.C. A scrapbook my residents made for me the best RA ever. A paystub from my first month in a career I was told I'll be good enough for. New memories, always new ones being made as I try to hold on to something, something, as everything around me continually falls apart and reassembles in shapes that look the same but are never as I remember. I just need a place to put the memory box for a couple of months while I figure out where I'll be next. My memories have become a burden ...

There’s something I need. Something to add. A memory I don’t want to lose. I sort through some junk boxes, rip open some drawers, prying at the darkest reaches of my own brain, trying to remember … where could it be? All I can remember is that it’s gold. It’s a gold tassel. With a gold band. It was a gift from Momella’s old boyfriend. My stepdad. Not really my stepdad. It was a gift from Pops. He gave it to me. He gave it to me. It was a parting gift. I guess he didn’t know it was a parting gift. It was from his graduation. It was his gift to me. To me. His son. I don’t know. I don’t know where it is. Maybe Momella threw it out. Maybe she saw her infidelity and threw it out. Maybe she found it and cried and remembered what it was like to feel, to love … and destroyed it. Maybe she stumbled upon it and hated that I kept it because I still remember, you can try to forget, but I’ll always remember Pops. Or maybe I just lost it.

Tired, formulating speeches in my head, I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling in the dark. Momella’s going to be mad when she sees this – Momella, my mother who was never quite a mother. Dad, my father who never wanted to be my father. Pops, my father who wanted but was never allowed to be my Dad. Maybe this is what Jhumpa Lahiri meant with her final scene of The Namesake. This place isn’t home. I know that now. A part of me has always known that. And maybe I’ll never find a home. I’ll always have places to live: places to pay rent, places to sleep, places to hang out with friends, places to dream of something more, places to live and love and cry and laugh and hurt and all of those other great things that make you feel you. But, right now, as I run my fingers across the spackle in a dent I made when I learned that I could hit back, as I feel the cold of the walls that for so long I wished would just burn, as I realize that I really am just a guest in the guest room, I feel something start to make sense, I feel something start to mend.

Maybe the whole point of going home is to recognize – to deeply and truly know – that this house was never my home. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe home’s something that I don’t get to have. Maybe I already said goodbye the very second I came out of Momella’s womb and maybe she said goodbye the very second she saw my twisting, screaming face. I know you’re only gonna hurt me. I know I’m gonna wish you stayed in. I know I’m gonna fail you …

Maybe my resolution is the lack thereof. Maybe this story full of letters, clichés, tropes, empty words – maybe these shapes that look the same as all the ones before actually mean something because they're the only thing that's mine. Maybe this story ended long ago …