junkmail for blankets

for mom

I have decided to slip into my parents’ lives by degrees. There are songs, films, cultural references that have attached themselves to the why-are-you-here part of my brain for upwards of 25 years now. Maybe these allusions are/were significant cultural artifacts for my folks. Probably not. But they’ve stayed with me for a reason; they say more about me than them. Slowly, I’ve begun giving them some attention, maybe as a way of giving my parents attention, as I’ve been bad about this.

Maybe it’s because I’m 29 now and a lot of the things I remember were part of my parents’ lives when they were the same age. By my age they had three kids, one of whom was a nine-year-old me. And the thing I remember the most from that time, about my mom, at least, is her listening to the St. Elmo’s Fire soundtrack. I vaguely remember her watching the movie. Whatever the case, St. Elmo’s Fire has stuck with me.

So I rented it last night. When the theme music came on, I felt the blur of nine again:

Growing up, you don't see the writing on the wall
Passing by, moving straight ahead, you knew it all
But maybe sometime if you feel the pain
You'll find you're all alone, everything has changed

Play the game, you know you can't quit until it's won
Soldier on, only you can do what must be done
You know in some way you're a lot like me
You're just a prisoner and you're tryin' to break free

I hadn’t heard that song in years, yet I knew the words, or at least knew them in the way I knew them when I was a kid. I had the “writing on the wall” part down, and the rest I could intonate correctly, at least.

I won’t summarize the film here, but will say that seeing it caused me to think about my parents, especially my mom, in a new way. She started being a mom when she was 17. I think of the things I’ve done since I was 17, and I wonder how many of those things my mom would have liked to have done. She would read this and say that she wouldn’t have traded me for the world, and I believe her, but I also know that there’s more to her than her kids. And, being one of her kids, I also realize that there’s more to her than I’ve known or will ever know.

This is all to say, mom and dad, thank you. For loving me, for taking care of me in a way that required taking away so many of your own goals, your own needs, your own hopes. For setting yourself aside in a way that I’ve never known. For allowing everything to change. For fighting the urges to break free. For holding everything together for so long, and for my sake. Growing up, I didn’t see the writing on the wall, but I’m learning to read, and the words rival the saints’, the martyrs’, the poets’. Next time we're together, I want to hear you read them out loud, to know what you dreamed of at 16, at 20, at 24, at 29.

And though I shudder at the thought, in the spirit of learning to read those childhood artifacts, I’ll be watching Yentl soon. Oi.

Posted by ghetto monk at April 10, 2004 01:23 PM | TrackBack