I’m 15 years old when I take the bus with my middle school best friend. Our companionship is one forged out of proximity; being the only two students in our class who lived in our alienated neighborhood, coincidental meetings on the bus eventually turned into intentional moments of camaraderie via the repeated sharing of adolescent awkwardness. I was always late, and yet he always waited.
The ragged seats and rushing crowds became a solaced scenography for our growingly dedicated interactions. One Thursday when students rejoiced at news of our 8 a.m. math class getting cancelled, we committed to meeting each other at a local cafe in lieu of sleeping in. The patterned-velvet background gave way to aromas of steamed milk and muffled jazz, and while the sun hadn’t even risen yet, the glowing ball of light in my chest illuminated our way clearly. I ordered my favorite drink – a cup of nostalgia, large, hot, for here. It’s a seasonal cup of tea that they used to offer, already long gone from the menu, but the barista makes it specially for me anyway and walks away beaming when they witness my realization of the extra cinnamon sticks.
The cafe doesn’t exist anymore. It closed years ago, stamped out by another run-of-the-mill chain, and my adolescent memory is forevermore trapped within a room I don’t have the keys to. But if I close my eyes, stand up, and stretch out my arms, I can still feel it; my fingertips graze over the bike mounted on the wall, the window seat, the pastry displays.
As the impending school day calls us in, we abandon our dirtied mugs and croissant crumbs and leave. This is not unusual. In my memories, I am usually leaving.
Then, I’m 17 on a car ride with my high school boyfriend. Early in our relationship, late into the evening. We sit down on a curb under the blood moon, and I swear that we didn’t plan it like this, but the ramifications of the metaphor fall on our shoulders anyway. I confess about my relationship with my parents and how I wish they didn’t have me when they did, for they were so young and unprepared, and I’m so ashamed of my untimely vitality that I stumble through my words as I deliberate if my mom could’ve had a better life without me in it. He calls bullshit on account of the stories of annual themed birthday parties and hours of taking me to figure skating practices, asking how all this love leads to my misguided musings, and for the first time my perspective on my right to exist in this world shifts parallel to the condemning moonlight on the mask of his dingy red car.
The moment fades to memory as tens of bugs suddenly crawl over us, rightfully upset at us disturbing an evening in their home, so once more we get up to leave. The sensation of their tiny feet tip-toeing around my bare legs uncovered for the dog days of summer is stuck with me forever, clinging to me like every moment that him & I spent together, ghosting like the kind hands that didn’t want to let me go yet still did when I told him, it’s time.
He taught me many of my first lessons about relationships, lingering in between breaths of front porch goodbye kisses that guided me enough to let myself accept love, but not always enough to accept a kind and gentle one. I still made many mistakes after that. Still repeatedly kissed my best friend of six turbulent years even though I was drinking hurt from her lips every time I did. Still allowed the yearnful push-and-pull, before moving across the continent to get away from our agonizing tug of war.
But, she held me when my dad would leave for months at a time. Listened, when I couldn’t take anymore of my mom’s litanies. Showed the grace I needed, when the numbers on exam papers and backs of yogurt containers weren’t adding up and I would lose my mind trying to make up for it. It’s her voice I hear, both when I berate myself and when I offer myself kindness.
In the weeks when her embrace would grow cold, I had no choice but to hug my mom instead. No longer able to avoid how her frail frame collapsed beneath the lightest touch, I lamented the loss of a warmth I could run to. A warmth that too, remembered her from a time when she was sturdy.
I have this memory of my mother from when I was eight, maybe nine. We had just moved back to our home country and were sitting on the living room couch, one of the few pieces of furniture we owned at the time, giggling away as we teaspooned our way through a jar of Nutella. She wouldn’t let me feel the heaviness of the change happening back then – day by day, the hollow rooms steadily filled to the brim with possibilities and tranquility.
Alas, this is the sweetness from Before. Before her new way of life; the abandoned candy drawer, the organic produce, the skipping breakfast, the growing vitamin cabinet threatening to spill out and ruin the illusion. And long, long before locked inside the house turned to trapped inside a room, the morning sickness, the trembling, the psychiatrist’s office, the hushed 5 a.m. phone calls to my father.
It all follows me. The good, the bad, the messy. The memories weave into my muscle fibers with every training session, punctuate every opportune email, line my go-to interview jacket, and hold me when I need a familiarity to fall back on. And when I happen to get lost, they nudge me to cut my hair again to the length it was at 18 years old and look in the mirror.
I listen to the music I loved at 16 and realize I never grew out of it. It carries me all the way to a concert of an artist I’ve been listening to since I was 12 in my bedroom with the floral purple wallpaper. This time, still as alone and lost as back then, I stand in an arena of a city foreign to me that I turned into a life out of all these scraps. I sway amongst strangers, meeting them wordlessly where they are, and when the show is over, the words ring out; And if the sun comes up / And I still don’t wanna stagger home / Then it’s the memory of our betters / That are keeping us on our feet.
The memories are not always of my betters, but they nurture me all the same. I twirl around, letting my fingertips graze the walls of the cafe from when I was 15. I think about my parents, my first loves, my complicated friends. I am unaccompanied at the concert, but I am not dancing through this world alone; how could I be, when I have all these memories to guide me?
References
- LCD Soundsystem (2007). All My Friends. On Sound of Silver. DFA and Capitol Records
Photo by Keith Chan
I’m 15 years old when I take the bus with my middle school best friend. Our companionship is one forged out of proximity; being the only two students in our class who lived in our alienated neighborhood, coincidental meetings on the bus eventually turned into intentional moments of camaraderie via the repeated sharing of adolescent awkwardness. I was always late, and yet he always waited.
The ragged seats and rushing crowds became a solaced scenography for our growingly dedicated interactions. One Thursday when students rejoiced at news of our 8 a.m. math class getting cancelled, we committed to meeting each other at a local cafe in lieu of sleeping in. The patterned-velvet background gave way to aromas of steamed milk and muffled jazz, and while the sun hadn’t even risen yet, the glowing ball of light in my chest illuminated our way clearly. I ordered my favorite drink – a cup of nostalgia, large, hot, for here. It’s a seasonal cup of tea that they used to offer, already long gone from the menu, but the barista makes it specially for me anyway and walks away beaming when they witness my realization of the extra cinnamon sticks.
The cafe doesn’t exist anymore. It closed years ago, stamped out by another run-of-the-mill chain, and my adolescent memory is forevermore trapped within a room I don’t have the keys to. But if I close my eyes, stand up, and stretch out my arms, I can still feel it; my fingertips graze over the bike mounted on the wall, the window seat, the pastry displays.
As the impending school day calls us in, we abandon our dirtied mugs and croissant crumbs and leave. This is not unusual. In my memories, I am usually leaving.
Then, I’m 17 on a car ride with my high school boyfriend. Early in our relationship, late into the evening. We sit down on a curb under the blood moon, and I swear that we didn’t plan it like this, but the ramifications of the metaphor fall on our shoulders anyway. I confess about my relationship with my parents and how I wish they didn’t have me when they did, for they were so young and unprepared, and I’m so ashamed of my untimely vitality that I stumble through my words as I deliberate if my mom could’ve had a better life without me in it. He calls bullshit on account of the stories of annual themed birthday parties and hours of taking me to figure skating practices, asking how all this love leads to my misguided musings, and for the first time my perspective on my right to exist in this world shifts parallel to the condemning moonlight on the mask of his dingy red car.
The moment fades to memory as tens of bugs suddenly crawl over us, rightfully upset at us disturbing an evening in their home, so once more we get up to leave. The sensation of their tiny feet tip-toeing around my bare legs uncovered for the dog days of summer is stuck with me forever, clinging to me like every moment that him & I spent together, ghosting like the kind hands that didn’t want to let me go yet still did when I told him, it’s time.
He taught me many of my first lessons about relationships, lingering in between breaths of front porch goodbye kisses that guided me enough to let myself accept love, but not always enough to accept a kind and gentle one. I still made many mistakes after that. Still repeatedly kissed my best friend of six turbulent years even though I was drinking hurt from her lips every time I did. Still allowed the yearnful push-and-pull, before moving across the continent to get away from our agonizing tug of war.
But, she held me when my dad would leave for months at a time. Listened, when I couldn’t take anymore of my mom’s litanies. Showed the grace I needed, when the numbers on exam papers and backs of yogurt containers weren’t adding up and I would lose my mind trying to make up for it. It’s her voice I hear, both when I berate myself and when I offer myself kindness.
In the weeks when her embrace would grow cold, I had no choice but to hug my mom instead. No longer able to avoid how her frail frame collapsed beneath the lightest touch, I lamented the loss of a warmth I could run to. A warmth that too, remembered her from a time when she was sturdy.
I have this memory of my mother from when I was eight, maybe nine. We had just moved back to our home country and were sitting on the living room couch, one of the few pieces of furniture we owned at the time, giggling away as we teaspooned our way through a jar of Nutella. She wouldn’t let me feel the heaviness of the change happening back then – day by day, the hollow rooms steadily filled to the brim with possibilities and tranquility.
Alas, this is the sweetness from Before. Before her new way of life; the abandoned candy drawer, the organic produce, the skipping breakfast, the growing vitamin cabinet threatening to spill out and ruin the illusion. And long, long before locked inside the house turned to trapped inside a room, the morning sickness, the trembling, the psychiatrist’s office, the hushed 5 a.m. phone calls to my father.
It all follows me. The good, the bad, the messy. The memories weave into my muscle fibers with every training session, punctuate every opportune email, line my go-to interview jacket, and hold me when I need a familiarity to fall back on. And when I happen to get lost, they nudge me to cut my hair again to the length it was at 18 years old and look in the mirror.
I listen to the music I loved at 16 and realize I never grew out of it. It carries me all the way to a concert of an artist I’ve been listening to since I was 12 in my bedroom with the floral purple wallpaper. This time, still as alone and lost as back then, I stand in an arena of a city foreign to me that I turned into a life out of all these scraps. I sway amongst strangers, meeting them wordlessly where they are, and when the show is over, the words ring out; And if the sun comes up / And I still don’t wanna stagger home / Then it’s the memory of our betters / That are keeping us on our feet.
The memories are not always of my betters, but they nurture me all the same. I twirl around, letting my fingertips graze the walls of the cafe from when I was 15. I think about my parents, my first loves, my complicated friends. I am unaccompanied at the concert, but I am not dancing through this world alone; how could I be, when I have all these memories to guide me?
References
- LCD Soundsystem (2007). All My Friends. On Sound of Silver. DFA and Capitol Records
Photo by Keith Chan
