Sometimes the thing that triggers a memory is odd. You might
have seen something hundreds of times and nothing. Then one day, in the
right light with the right conversation preceding it, you look and remember.
This happened to me a few days ago. Lesco and I were out
with Phin on a walk. Since my doctor has forbidden me to run, walking is happening a
lot around these parts. We passed by the same houses we’ve passed by so many evenings
over the last ten years. We talked about things we’ve talked about before and
nitpicked things we’ve nitpicked before but maybe because of where I am right
now in life and where we are as a family I felt a little more vulnerable. So
when we came to a house that normally strikes me as garish with fake flowers
stuck in every fence crack and a bright pink paint job highlighting a
collection of cupid and creepy child sculptures holding more, yes more, fake
flowers, it looked different. There were real pink roses blooming everywhere.
Thousands of blooming pink roses. It looked beautiful, truly.
In the half moon driveway were two older men chatting over
something on a parked boat they were piddling around on. I assumed one must be
the owner of the house and I thought of how proud he must be of all those
flowers. A picture of him tending those roses starting forming but it so
quickly triggered a memory that I never saw the whole picture.
The street I grew up on had a house with a large front yard
at the entrance, a corner house. An older man lived there with
his wife and they had quite the beautiful yard with fruit trees and flowers in
abundance. A well-tended little oasis. I don’t remember the garden very well, my
mind might be duplicating other people’s recollections rather than seeing a
memory but I know it was there. What I remember is after.
The man’s wife passed away while we lived on that street. I
don’t know how, I was so young, but I semi recall someone saying later that
she was sick, maybe cancer. The older man was so heartbroken he
chopped down all of the trees. He let every flower die. Every loved corner fell
to neglect. And that is how I remember the yard. Just a giant dirt lot at the
end of our road with a man that us neighborhood kids, in typical, cruel kid
fashion called Frenchie due to his thick accent. Never to his face, mind you,
we were too frightened. He was not friendly or warm. He was mysterious and
reclusive and he was sad.
I don’t think as children we understood how alone he must
have felt but there was an incident. One ordinary day we were driving down the street and there
he was. Not on our quiet, play kickball in the middle of the road until someone
yells car, street. In the middle of a busy road. He was dressed sparsely and making gestures to his chest. We stopped. I
asked whichever parent that was driving at the time what he was doing.
“I think he wants a car to hit him. I think he’s asking
someone to hit him.”
Of course nobody honored his request, but that’s the picture
that flashed into my mind in front of that pink house. A lonely, heartbroken
man standing in the middle of the street begging someone else to end his life.
We are the type of family that sits around the Sunday table and
tells whatever unfortunate guest that happened to join us that week stories
from that street. We tell about all the odd or different people we’ve
encountered. We tattle on each other. We laugh about the time there were snipers in our front yard climbing tree or the time our drunk neighbor tried to yank my brother out of our
parent's bathroom because he thought he was a burglar. We tell these stories
over and over.
I don’t recall us talking about this man much. He comes up,
but it seems too thick to recall as innocent dinner chatter. Jared, who must
have heard every story, hadn’t heard of this man. So the rest of the walk home
I thought of him. I thought what it must have been like for him, all alone. I
thought about all the others in this world with even larger heartbreak. I
thought about how small we all are. I though how I have a responsibility to
teach my child to be kind and think larger than things. I thought that maybe I
could plant some pink roses, maybe that would help me remember.
