The problem with dating in junior high is people think everyone is waiting and watching for what they’ll do next. It’s a movie, and the couple is with other friends, but it’s never about watching the movie. It’s someone else’s home, but the parents are mysteriously not present, and the feeling of eyes still glaring is unforgivable. Should the man reach for a hand? Embrace the first step of many in their quest for something they hardly know? Arm around the shoulder then, if they have the guts. The man (child) decides, and throws the arm, but only because a friend of a friend said that she has a crush on him and that he should make some move. This is the first step in the realization of miscommunication. At school the next day, the girl blatantly says that she has no interest in him, but would like to remain friends, or something like that. The boy has a hard time hearing those last words as his fingers feel like water hoses are pushing from inside. Sweat from his armpits are racing down his chest, and his only hope for survival is to be as cordial and understanding as possible. If he doesn’t, the one thing that could happen is him tackling her and shouting while deflecting pathetic arm grabs, “Your friend is a liar!”
The true response comes from the boy that night after school. When a mother enters the room and asks, “How did the date go?” Moms know these things because the biological timeline of their child is never forgotten, especially from a mother who cares. In any case, it’s all it took for the boy to crumple like stacks of newspaper and sprawl out on the shaggy gray carpet and huff and puff. The tragedy that he’ll never blow the house down is never realized in the wheezing, and he keeps crying. All the mother can hear are things like, “It’s not fair” and “I’m never getting married.” Fortunately for the boy, the mother is some form of magician, and can soothe those ruffled feathers. All it takes is soaking up his tears in her t-shirt. All it takes is quiet whispers of reassurance that someday there will be someone who will be just the one for the boy. The boy sleeps like it never happened.
And in the end this story is lighter than others. It turns out the girl telling the boy early on about her feelings was the best thing a woman can do. And she learned it in junior high. But then we can conclude that there must have been worst stories, terrible ones. They weren’t all bad, but they weren’t all bad because there are traces of kinship in the human imagination and in literature that are so nurturing as to bring us to tears, and then there are our real mothers. And the ones in fantasy don’t nearly come close to the ones that have lived to tell their own tales.
In those heated days that never seemed to end, I hated those damn shoulder pads. Think about the most constricting clothing to ever be presented to a man, combine them all and then tell him it’s over one hundred degrees outside, and then tell him he must battle to the death against more of the same. In those heated days all the parents take pictures and barely sit in the fold out chairs. In those heated days, they still must’ve yelled at the officials and argued about the concession stand prices. But one thing is for sure: those parents saw their children raise lightning and throw down hell on those fields. Even if it was some form of absurdity in which parents are screaming “No son, dribble to the other side” or “Get the ball”, they were still titans. At the end of that hot day on the grass as they picked away at ants crawling up their cleats, they must’ve looked like the prize winner of the world. “My son is the future” they must have all agreed as they rubbed their children’s sweaty heads, and then bitter sweetly rubbed their hands on their jeans. And in those days was my mother. I was never a sport God. I never made great plays, or ran for touchdowns, or led in heroic speeches, but my mother did not care. I would eat snow cones and squint tightly as the ice froze my front teeth; my big gapped front teeth. And I drank it up, I drank it all up. All my mother wanted to do was watch. While I was throwing natural curves, all she wanted to do was witness me, like I was some new breed that no one else saw.
Picture a red suburban, the older kind, before SUV’s ruined everything. Picture the paint chipping off at the top, not because it was old, but because it literally could not take the intensity by which my mother and I listened to classic rock. Picture musicals that seem trivial now, but were witnessed five out of five times by a mother who drank it up, not by performing, but by just being there.
“Mom do you have any aspirin?”
“What?”
It’s the night of pop show, my senior year performance. I learned that aspirin helps the voice. I had no idea if that was true, but in those circumstances you’ll try anything.
“Do you have a headache?” she asked.
“No mom, I just need it. Ms. James said it helped the singing.”
We are backstage, and Mom gives me a look that says, “You’ll be fine” as she turns and heads back around to take her place in the audience.
We’re singing For The Longest Time, and it’s my turn at the solo. The crowd loves us, and tilt their heads right and left as we charm anyone and everyone, because that’s what seniors do I suppose. I get to the high notes, and when I do the most horrible crack occurs. My voice shatters in volume and in hindsight friends watch videos of it and laugh for hours, blowing it off. I know this because it’s mine, and while people always say they forget those things, I never believe them. Because how could they ever forget? It’s the worst thing in choral history. Watching the video footage, my other choral comrades literally could not snap together because they were physically disabled at the wretched sound. It sounded like a walrus couldn’t make it out of the swimming pool and just “arfs” his fat slob body on the side of the pool.
I head backstage and everyone looks at me for a reaction. By this stage of my life they still do not know how I react to these things. They obviously didn’t know the story of placing the arm around the girl. While I did nothing at school, the aftershock and reality always hits hours later, when I’m safe, alone. Always act cordially, because people will respect you for it, or something. But mother knows. She is there and when I walk up to her, she’s already got the aspirin in her left and a bottle of water in the right. She smiles a little, and I’m horribly stoic.
Singing Beyond the Sea later in that concert was the most important moment in my life because it taught me two things: one is to always get back up when you fall and the crowd will love you for it. The second is there will never ever be music that is so fun to sing as the jazz I sing now. It was young, it was confident, and it the beginning of something. Beyond the Sea was the story of a man who was a boy. He wept when he realized that he killed any hope of a future with one woman, but somehow on the other side there would be someone. Beyond the Sea, in a sense, was my mother.
I sang in college, but stopped. I played sports until high school, then stopped. I dated until graduation, then stopped. All my loves, all my desires, are becoming less and less relevant. But only to a certain degree, because no matter how many less and less people hear or see what I have to offer, there will always be one person who knows damn well what I can do, and loves me all the more even when I don’t do them. In her mind, I’m always throwing lightning, climbing some mountain that seems to be a mere geographic hindrance.
What I hate most about the Giving Tree, is the fact that this tree gets literally torn apart and all that’s left is a stump. And when the child returns as an old man, the stump is glad to have one last usefulness. It’s the most horrific moment in which the old man almost expects there to be someway out of the moment by using the tree, almost as if he expects it. And the tree gives in. It’s a horrible tale of lack of responsibility. And also it’s self hatred. Because I picture myself as this boy, and I picture my parents as the tree. “Don’t worry,” they say, “We want to do this.” Well that’s great and all but it doesn’t really fit well with me. Because where was I when they got dumped on dates and where was I when they cracked their voices or lost a game?
So this is all I’ve got. This is my building of a paper boat in a hurricane. This is me swinging at 98 mile per hour fast balls. This is me singing Beyond the Sea while falling 15 stories. Because it’s all I’ve got now, and I don’t ever want to keep writing without attempting to say happy mother’s day because my mother gave me everything I have today. And even at 21, I’m still just a boy who is still crying on shaggy carpet, and my mother is always there to dry them in a t-shirt.
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