Velvet Verbosity

I see her every morning, and sometimes in the afternoon. She runs up and down my road every day, but she doesn’t look like a runner. She doesn’t have proper running shoes, or clothing. She looks pained but isn’t sweating. She doesn’t move like a runner, she holds her arms the wrong way.

It is safe to say that she is probably new at this sport of running, but it isn’t only that. She is overcoming something. Running, for her, is not just an avenue for a firmer body and better stamina. No, she is running for other reasons, and I can see them written all over her.

She runs to escape a past, to get ahead of the present, and in the hopes of arriving in a new future. She runs to break the barriers between the universe she lives in now, and the parallel universe that could be her life. She runs to build…her muscle, her confidence, her dreams, her will. She runs to escape the last remnants of darkness that cling inside her. She runs against the grain, against everything she has ever been shown, ever been taught, ever been allowed. She runs for freedom. She runs to save her soul.

(Image: Sean Gabriel Ellul http://www.sellul.com/dmaster12.html)

Her world is now vivid and sharp-edged. Her world is 13. Her world is self-important, self-indulgent, fulsome and large…yet so small to any onlooker.

I know that world, I remember it. The aching needs that must be filled while the source eludes. The terrible clamor of peer-pressure knocking at every turn. The feverish race to be in. To not keep up is to be “out” and that is no place anyone wants to be at 13. To be “out” is social death. At 13, it might as well be real death. 13 hasn’t comprehended what that means anyway.

The body, oh the terrifically annoying body that is never the right size or shape…too big, too small, too round, too narrow, too tall, too short, too curvy, too flat.

13 is the world of “everyone else”. Everyone else has the goods, and 13 doesn’t understand it’s all an illusion. If just once, they would all drop the illusion at precisely the same moment, unveil all the massive insecurity, it might cause a wave of cosmic energy so powerful that the earth would shift on its axis.

At the traffic light I see them. He is capable, fit, loose in his body, and confident. He crosses the busy street with ease, knowing without effort how much give and take is needed to navigate the traffic. His shirt lifts as the cars pass. He doesn’t hesitate, he moves like liquid between the cars.

The other He waits on the curb, smiling nervously, fists shoved into pockets as he waits for an opening that on this street, may never come. His eyes alternate between his confident companion walking away, not turning back, and the cars speeding by bumper to bumper. He flips his hair in an effort to look confident, to appear cool with it.

For the first time, my heart does not weep for the underdog. I simply see…see that one will move through his life with ease and this will burn him in ways he has yet to come to understand…and the other will agonize over each decision, each word he speaks, and this will probably bring him more security than he can now imagine.

He grew down instead of up. Sometimes people do that. It’s not that he didn’t try, but he built his stairs like a house of cards, only without grace and patience. It couldn’t bear the weight of his pain.

He found it easier, when the cards began to fall, to go down..gravity and velocity his companions. He tried to take me with him, grabbed my ankles as he fell, and God help me I almost went. But my resolve to live was stronger than his pain, stronger than the force of gravity.

I didn’t bother struggling. I slicked my ankles with vaseline, watched him slip, and said good-bye.

(Image from: http://abyss.hubbe.net/jeremiah/gallery/gfx/covers/jtv/lg/ep/s2/205-falling-lg.jpg)

Driving this morning, I see him walking. Old man with a fisherman’s hat, walking slowly. Maybe it is because I am halfway to 70 that I wonder if I will love an old man someday. If I will find the stoop in his shoulders and the shuffle of his feet endearing. If I will kiss his thinned softened lips and still feel a little spark.

As it happens in imperceptable increments, will I notice him growing old with me? Or will we look at each other and see each other exactly as the day we met?

Pediatrician waiting room, 3 p.m. - He is soft…soft face, soft brown eyes, soft long hair, soft body, soft shoes. His body whispers of warm waters, composting leaves and earth, endless gentle streams slowly smoothing the rocks.

His son is a small version of him and he dotes after his baby sister, she a pink cheeked child of delight and eager wonder. The father watches his son rock his sister on a rocking horse. The son looks to his father as he rocks her…once, twice, and again…smiling, seeking reassurance.

It comes, it never wavers. The father’s approval is a beam streaming from eye to eye, unfaltering.

State Street, 4:25 p.m. - He is happy, happy, happy. His grin is almost silly, so full of happiness and pride. “Giddy” or “delirious with joy” come to mind as I watch him. Mom and baby on a bike in front of him, he takes up the rear where they cannot see the sparkles of love lighting up his eyes, brighter than the late afternoon sun that blinds me as I drive.

Lacrosse game, 6:30 p.m. - He has come straight from work to sit on the cold metal of the bleachers. The wind flaps at the bottom corner of his navy business suit. When he smiles, he is a movie star with his bright tiny pearl teeth flashing beneath black sunglasses. He is perfectly trimmed and perfectly proud.