Kathy M. - PJ’s

 

 

He wasn’t wearing pajamas when he stood at the screendoor ~ standing in his boxer shorts instead.  I was in first grade.  He had heard the screech of the school bus tires, and jumped out of bed, my mother told me, to make sure his daughter, me, was alright.  The kids laughed at my Daddy in his underwear and boarded the bus.  I was ashamed for him.  Norman never wore pajamas.

 

 

 

            Neither did my stepfather, Herby, who also used to stand, in his boxers, sipping his morning coffee and shoving a needle full of insulin into his leather hide arm by forcing the syringe against the handle of the freezer door.  His scrawny, scarred hockey legs sticking out of his boxer shorts while I tried to keep my eyes averted from the slit in the front of the material threatening to open.

            Mostly we avoided talking.  Not because we didn’t like each other (love is too strong a word), but because neither of us were morning people.  We were comfortable enough to sip our coffees in silence while my mother slept.  He, standing in the corner, no pajamas, ~ just coffee and insulin ~ and me, sitting at the table, just coffee and insolence.  I couldn’t help it, I was fifteen after all.

 

 

 

            He was my step-father for eighteen years, from the time I was twelve, until he died when I was thirty.  Eighteen years, and if I’ve ever missed him, I’ve never noticed.  Where is my heart?  Because I loved him, I did.  But we were not close.  He didn’t meet a single one of my emotional needs.  He was just there, married to my mother, paying my college tuition when my father wouldn’t.  And me, oblivious.  When  I was young,  I accepted the parade of characters who came into my life without question. And I loved, though in a superficial way.  Except for my father.  For him, I longed.  For him, I grieved ~ this man who in my fantasy, would be the one person to understand me, if only he didn’t live out of state. 

            Norman, dead for thirty three years, is a presence to me still.  Palpable.  Like the lingering scent of a cigar.  The feel of a black and white movie from the 40’s with a nostalgic sound track.  He is memory deeper than memory.  Desire and dread. 

            We were outside on a summer’s night, with neighbors.  He lay sideways on the grass, relaxed, legs out.  Handsome and inviting.  I adored him.  He made me nervous.  Playing with clover.  He, smoking a filtered Tareyton, engaged in the grown-up laughter with Dick Curley.  I was jealous.  He never laughed like that with me.  Why not?  The magic of fireflies ~ spotting them twinkling in the grass ~ catching them in an empty jar.  Delicious to be up past my bedtime.  I wanted the grown ups to keep talking and laughing, so I could stay out under the stars, with my father, who was, for a change, happy.

            On other summer nights, my mother would hear the bell of the icecream truck from inside the house, and flash the front light on and off, so the driver would know to stop, like a traveling Dairy Queen on wheels.  We got hot fudge sundaes with soft serve vanilla icecream, real whipped cream, chopped nuts, and the cherries, my own, and theirs, given to me.

            Why don’t I have more memories of my childhood?  Deficient brain?  I remember Bonanza and the Chevrolet commercials and the Sunday night blues.  Being afraid to walk down the hall to my bedroom, but noone said, “I’ll go with you, sweetheart.  Don’t be afraid.” 

            I had matching pajamas in those days.  In the picture I am wearing blue flannel pajamas and red corduroy slippers, smiling for the camera, and holding her hand.  She is ready to crawl down from the black, nubby swivel rocking chair.  Freshly bathed, with a wet finger curl coiling up from the middle of her head.  She was wearing yellow footed pajamas.  I need to find that picture.  Me at eight, she, my baby cousin, at six months.  That picture was a moment in my life, and I think I remember the moment, but perhaps I only remember the picture?        I’m frustrated with my memory.  I want all of them back.  I want to be able to feel, taste, smell, recreate the scenes.  My mind is like swiss cheese, filled with holes and I grieve for what I can only partially recover.  Like almost re-uniting with a lover, close enough to embrace, but not embracing.  The loss of my memories feels like the loss of myself.  As if I am a partial amnesiac victim who has lost her history.  The best writing I could ever do would always be about restoration.  I was there.  I do remember.  Digging through memory on an archeological dig, I have refigured the bones. See how I have recovered them, so that it can never be lost again?  But, oh, that isn’t possible.  Only the first time around is the experience, whole and pure.  Everything after that is shards. 

            I loved the little girl who was me, but not well enough, and now her life is half over, and like a parent who realizes she has been neglectful, I want a second chance to be conscious, even if it hurts like hell.  I want someone to shake me awake, one memory at a time.  Let me be grateful for even the dimmest recollection, murky and mysterious.  Let me celebrate what is excavated, not mourn what is lost forever.  Let me trust that what I have is always enough for now.  Each whisper of memory is filled with infinite love.  Can I rest in that?