Crossing Over written January 12, 2010

January 12, 1975

Part two

The night before the crossing was especially cold.  That day was spent revisiting old places, looking for the lost spaces of a faded childhood memory, the street where I grew up on Lake Champlain; a planted tree, my brother’s friends’ sister doing a striptease, baseball and bikes, my first black bikini and the big dog bite; the teacher who came house calling, my baby brother on the dining room table crying out, his little body in a fever seizure, the doctor’s stethoscope dangling over his tiny heaving chest.  The maple trees and all the leaves that would fall to the ground just for me to pile into mounds, their crackling a perfect sound to my ears while jumping and rolling in the smell, I will never forget the child with no regrets.  I never found the street but I think I drew near, dusk elected me to head toward the University where I was born, the University where I started from.  There might be people to visit, stories to hear, it was beginning to become very cold and I longed to take refuge from the chilly Vermont air.  Rope swings and root beer floats, lasagna made with summer squash, Popsicle boats and white paper planes is what I remembered as I rang the doorbell to this domain.  Tony and June with two or was it three kids who got to eat all that good food; there they sat at the same table from so many years before giving offerings and advice these people with measurable pride but not as measurable as mine, I said my thanks, anyways and goodbye’s and headed out to find refuge somewhere else… How does one arrive at that place where innocence is replaced with loathsome repression as a form of expression. What I felt then, the thoughts that entered my head masked by the pain of rejection and an affection to find out why love no longer held my hand, why I chose to stand alone against a darkened sky a view of the world through blackened eyes and an even blacker soul. Forgiveness weighed in heavy, no crying left to do just move ahead and cross that ice and snow covered bridge so I did. I had returned to the place of my birth and so too maybe my death.