Remember me?

            People cradled my face and said things like, “You look just like him. Look at those eyes,” and, “Really, he lives on in you and your sister.” Those are lovely sentiments, but I couldn’t fathom how to appreciate them, so instead I would smile vacantly, nod, and think, “No, he’s dead. There’s no more living on for him.”
            At his funeral, while teeming with self-consciousness, I remember pulling at the clingy, black outfit from Loehmann’s I had found in the Junior’s department and worn to Rosh Hashanah services earlier that year. At eleven years old, I had one foot firmly placed in the comfy confines of childhood, and the other foot precariously positioned in the world of tweendom. I had planned to use my tween years to test out make-up and slightly trendier clothes, all in pursuit of becoming instantly cool a la She’s Out of Control – the 90s movie in which the geeky girl turns into a gorgeous teen whom all the boys fawn over. But my sixth grade year did no go as planned and in lieu of consumption by way of boys and parties and what lunch table I’d sit at, my dad developed stomachaches. His pain grew so suddenly intense that on our family road trip, he drank an entire bulk case of Maalox. The eternal optimist he was, and clutching to a gross misdiagnosis of ulcers, he kept his worst fears and the severity of his agony hidden from us the best he could. He assured us he was fine, despite wearing the unspoken truth on his taught, strained face. Be we soon realized he was slipping out of our grasp, as if a thin yet impenetrable membrane had formed over his handsome, charming, Irish self.
            His stomachaches quickly turned into cancer and cancer turned into a funeral four months later. During his illness he remained upright because the cancer had coiled in and around his spine. Unable to recline, he sat up through the duration of his battle, writhing in a leather chair in our living room, captive to his own rapidly deteriorating body. My parents spent entire days at the library poring over journals and books that espoused recent breakthroughs in cancer research. Since his cancer had advanced beyond the aid of chemotherapy, and radiation eroded his organs worse than the tumor, his only options were natural remedies. My parents soaked Maitake mushrooms in the basement, ordered capsules of Cat’s Claw and Shark Cartilage, and began contacting anyone who had found success using alternative regimens. One day I accompanied my mom to visit a local woman who contributed her recovery to all the supplements my dad had begun taking religiously. The youthful forty-something woman possessed the glow of survival and she convinced us that we too could one day find our way to remission. It was moments such as those where I thought, “It’s not too late. The doctors are wrong. He can make it.” But, then I would return home from school only to see him writhing in the living room, exactly how I had left him—his withered frame bent over, gray beard attempting to fill in the cavities of his gaunt face. And just like that, remission seemed as made-up a place as Oz. Six-months after learning that cancer had invaded his spine and stomach, there I was, receiving people’s tears, words, and attempts at comfort. But what could they say to the daughters and wife who survived this beloved man? Nothing could bring him back, and that was the fact that I held onto.
            The seasons have turned, years have elapsed, and we have somehow managed to turn our broken pieces into a collage of normalcy. More entangled in each other’s lives now than ever, we remaining three talk on the phone so often that upon starting my freshman year of college, a fellow frosh asked, “How often do you call home?” I replied, in earnest, “Today?”
            My husband knows my dad through stories, I remember my dad through yellowed photo albums, and my mom, sister and I still yearn for one more moment with the man whose absence and presence have had equal impressions on our lives. Unlike many friends of mine whose parents got divorced and soon remarried another, my mom has never dated anyone. She says she found her one true love and that, in her words, she’s “perfectly content.” She travels through Europe, has a season’s pass to the local theater house, and frequents the independent cinema in town. She has never been one to accept idle life. My mom jokes that visitors to our house probably assume my dad has just briefly stepped out since we tell stories of him so effortlessly and often. However, sometimes our longing to hug him glows so strong that it is not uncommon for any one of us to dream that he has come back, forcing said dreamer mid-reverie to awkwardly explain to everyone he was just “on vacation.” We have our lives as they are now, and we have our lives as they were then. Yet, the slightest whiff of Stetson or faintest melody of a Willie Nelson song, and the past fourteen years collapse like an accordion and I’m back to remembering he’s gone.
            One recent morning, while walking to work, I called my mom to ask about a birthday party she attended the night before. She said, “Oh you know, it was like Mary Tyler Moore goes to a party.” I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, but took it to imply, “Strong, fabulous lady goes to social event solo, carrying conversation, witty banter, and glasses of wine all at once.” Then she said, “Oh my, do I have a story for you!”
            She went on to say, “I was just futzing around the house yesterday, tired from the party, when I heard the bell ring. I assumed it was Steve from across the street coming to see about painting the side of the house, but there was some guy standing at the front door. He asked me if I recognized him. And as you know, ‘Do you recognize me,’ are my least favorite words next to, ‘Mom, watch me.’ Anyway, of course I said, ‘Oh, no, I’m sorry but I don’t know you. What’s your name?’ And this guy said his name is Ray, and then said, ‘Don’t you remember? I worked in Julius’s? The deli in town? I used to help Billy out on little odds-and-ends jobs, and we’d all hang out on your boat?’ Then, it all came flooding back to me! I knew exactly who it was! Ray was this guy who we knew from town, and he and Dad were friends, but this was years ago! He was one of our first friends when we moved here. Ray lives in Florida, and has for a long time, and was just up visiting a few friends on Long Island and thought he’d swing by. Anyway, so then, here’s the kicker, we were still standing at the front door when he asked, ‘Is Billy home?’”
            I drew in my breath as if gasping for air and stopped short on the sidewalk. My mom continued on with her story, recounting how she explained to Ray that my dad passed away fourteen years ago. Apparently, Ray almost fell over. He couldn’t believe or understand it. He kept saying, “He was so healthy! Cancer? I’m so sorry. Wow…” He reiterated how my dad was truly the nicest person he had ever met and how my parents remain some of the most welcoming and generous people he’s ever known. During the impromptu reunion, Ray said he was pleased to hear that my parents decided to have kids as he cooed over the gallery of wall and table space devoted to plaster imprints of our once small hands, finger-painted pictures “To Mom,” and photos of us across the years, at Colonial Williamsburg, The Eiffel Tower, my wedding, all testimony to childhoods salvaged and savored.
            The last time Ray saw my parents was thirty years. In that time he has moved away, carrying his friends with him in memories. He has led a good life, and assumed his old friends did the same. In Ray’s version of how things unfolded, my dad remained as friendly and fit as ever—restoring old furniture in the garage, and watching the sunset with my mom on their little house boat, which they bought for $1,000 in 1976. He assumed my parents had gone on to raise kids, and if they did, they were sure to be the parents everyone wanted—camping, wearing high-tops, going on midnight adventures to Carvel for sundaes with extra gummy bears. Even though cancer punctuated our happy foursome, shifting the course of our lives away from our original destination of picket-fence perfection, we have journeyed on a nourishing route. Nonetheless, we have gone on, us three. Hearing my mom’s story, however, instantly made me feel like my dad died all over again. And this time, instead of mourning the life he actually left behind, I mourned the life Ray authored for him—complete with adventures with the grown daughters, the strong wife, and the changing times. The life that was just beyond his grasp. That morning, Ray brought my dad back, and not just for the moment that my mom, sister and I always longed for, but he wrote him into the past thirty years, and he gave him the life he would have wanted.

I prefer Rufus to Doris. You?

“Can I ask you something? Can I ask you something serious,” Christopher said seriously.

“Sure,” I reply.

“So you don’t mind if I ask you something? You don’t mind, no?”

“No, I don’t mind. You can ask.”

“So I can ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“OK, let me ask you something serious. Do you wear contacts? Do you?” he asks.

He licks the marinara sauce off his fingers, scattering his stare around the pizzeria, waiting intently for my response to his urgent question.

“You know already. You know,” I say, aware that I am about to enter into a game of compulsivity.

“But do you? Do you wear contacts?”

“You know, Christopher. What do you think I do?”

“You don’t wear contacts, right? You don’t, do you?” He straightens his plate and seven crumpled napkins, then starts to shake his head as if shaking out his discomfort.

He follows up by asking, “So you have perfect vision? You were born as a baby with perfect vision?”

“Yes, I was born with perfect vision I guess,” I say. “So how is your work going at Home Depot?”

“You have perfect vision. So you don’t wear glasses then? Do you wear glasses? No, right? Because you have perfect vision so you don’t wear glasses. Right?”

“Are you enjoying your time at Home Depot? Are you taking the bus by yourself?” I asks in an effort to steer our conversation, or what some would call a round of obsessive-compulsive questioning, away from topics that feed Christopher’s fascinations. Christopher has autism. My husband used to work with him once upon a time, and he and I have taken a real liking to each other. We still get together every now and again, for pizza and catching up.

“I asked you a question if you wear glasses and you ignored me. You ignored my question.”

At age twenty, Christopher twitches around in the Formica booth, wiping his hands and face, looking to me for his next fix. Not answering his questions, especially those related to his favorite topics, stirs up an uneasiness in him that swells through his body and cannot be tamed. I know if I answer his line of questioning he’ll instantly feel satiated. He is doing his best to engage me in this process, but the temporary satisfaction will quickly be replaced with more anxiety and agitation.

“I did ignore you because we shouldn’t be talking about this. You know I don’t wear glasses—“

“You don’t wear glasses? I knew you didn’t.”

“—and this isn’t a good use of our time. I just wanted to see you on your lunch break and see how you’re doing, and we’re talking about glasses. How are you?” I push.

“Well,” he says, taking a big sip of his soda, “there is a new girl at work, Ashley. She is there at work with me. Do you like that name, Ashley?” he asks, almost innocently.

“It’s OK, although I’m not a huge fan,” I say, knowing where this conversation is going. I don’t mind the name game, and find myself strangely entertained by it. I live with my own set of obsessive behaviors—including my propensity count things in eights, and to trace shapes (like the outline of the TV) with my teeth in a repetitive manner. On the very low end of obsessive-compulsive behavior my life is only mildly controlled by these tendencies, whereas hearing a name he greatly dislikes, such as Doris, sets the tone of Christopher’s day.

“What about the name Rupert?” I ask with a smile and rise of my eyebrows. I suspect I know the answer.

“Yes, I like the name Rupert. Rupert. Do you like that name?” He starts jutting his head like a whirligig and jumping up in his seat, rocking the booth back and forth. He’s happy with our new dialogue.

“Yea, I like that name, a lot actually. I like the -oop sound, you know?” I know he does because we are almost always in sync with our particular choices in names and the reasons as well.

“Yes, I like that sound and it’s like Rufus, which I also like. Do you like Rufus? Not Rupert, even though they sound alike, but Rufus. Do you like that name?”

“I do! OK, let’s stop talking about names. We’ve talked about names for long enough. Do you like your pizza?” I ask.

“Why don’t you want to talk about names anymore? Is it bad to talk about names? We shouldn’t talk about names? No, we shouldn’t? Or yes, we should?” He looks sterner upon asking this question.

“Let’s talk about the bus. How is the bus working out? Do you still take it on your own to work?”

“You don’t want to talk about names? Why don’t you?”

He is trying in earnest to rope me back in. I know I should stay strong. Lingering in topics like names and vision problems do nothing but cripple him socially and show him it’s appropriate to discuss these subjects with others. Yet while I’m talking with him like this it seems completely fine, no worse than talking with Cece about my clothing options for Saturday night or talking with my mom about the Wednesday night line-up on TV. But it is different, I know.

“That pizza was delicious! And the soda was perfecto! Did you like your pizza, Christopher?” I ask.

“Yes, it was good. I usually get this though. May I ask you something, Jo? You won’t be mad if I ask you something, right? You won’t get mad at me if I ask you something? You wouldn’t get mad.”

“I won’t get mad, but I might not want to talk about it. I won’t get mad, I promise,” I assure him.

“What is your favorite kind of food?”

Good. I think this is a fairly healthy path. “Well, I like everything, really. But not meat because I’m a vegetarian, but you knew that. Umm, I guess I like chocolate the best!” I say, probably due to my need to finish off any meal with a little sweet.

He squeals with laughter and claps his hands once, rocking back and forth. “Me too! But do you like other things like that? Would you eat candy that’s not chocolate? Would you? You don’t mind if I ask you right? This is OK to talk about, right?”

“Sure, it’s fine to ask that. Let me think… Umm, I really like Skittles actually. Do you like Skittles?”

“Yes! Oh yes! I love Skittles. You like Skittles? What about ice cream? Do you like ice cream? “

“Of course! I love ice cream.”

“You do? Do you like vanilla or chocolate ice cream? Because you said you like chocolate but do you like chocolate ice cream? You must like it. Do you?” He is very excited about our tête-à-tête.

“I like vanilla more than chocolate ice cream. Skittles and vanilla ice cream,” I say, summing up my preferences, hungrier than ever for a little sugar.

“Skittles and vanilla ice cream!” he echoes.

Curtis, who was very amused by this lunch and remained silent throughout the duration, speaks up and says, “OK, Christopher. If you’re going to get to work on time then you should start walking to the bus stop. What do you need to take the bus?”

“Well, let’s see, I need 75 cents, which is three quarters.”

“Do you have three quarters?”

“Yes, I have my three quarters, Curtis. Do you like the name Curtis, Jo?” he asks, and I realize Christopher is prolonging our time together and ignoring Curtis’s request to start walking to the bus stop. I’m sad too.

“You have your money? So we can go?” Curtis asks.

“I had it when we got here. But now I can’t find my quarters!”

He looks anxious and starts walking between the table where we ate and the front door of the pizzeria. “I can’t ride the bus if I don’t have three quarters!”

I run to our car parked out front and search the change compartment. I grab a handful of coins and start poking through the pile with my index finger for some arrant quarters. Christopher’s bus is arriving in four minutes, and I’ve found two quarters when I see Curtis and Christopher standing by the front door of the restaurant. Christopher’s head is looking down and he seems to be tearing up. Then he bursts through the front door and Curtis just looks at me with a cockeyed smile and shrugs.

No sooner do I start to climb out of the car, Christopher walks back outside, holding his fist up in the air looking victorious. He opens his palm for Curtis to see and they both wave me on, signaling his discovery of the 75 cents.

I’m frightened by episodes of nervousness such as this and reminded of the randomness of life. Why is my OCD manageable whereas Christopher’s is frustratingly present and overwhelming? I am tired from our thirty-minute lunch, tired from cyclical conversations and tangible angst, and I wonder how Christopher lives through each day—or even worse, though moments of greater crisis than misplacing bus fare.

As I drive my car past the bus stop about fifty feet away, Christopher and Curtis stand under the plastic alcove, and I notice Christopher white-knuckling the coins. Onlookers would not suspect that there is anything wrong with Christopher if they saw these two men waiting for the bus. No one would realize right away that one is a psychologist and the other a man who copes with autism. You would have to talk to them first to realize the differences that cleave them apart.

I wave to them, and Christopher jumps up and gives me a feverish wave back. He’s smiling. He yells something at me, but I’m too far away to hear him. Curtis blows me a kiss and then I drive away, watching them shrink away through the rear view mirror, waiting for the bus.

Later that afternoon I pick up Curtis from town. He is standing in front of a local bookshop, grinning from ear to ear, happy to see me. I know we are lucky. We are lucky that picking out the perfect piece of pizza is not an ordeal or that hearing the name Doris does not fling us into overpowering worry.

“Did you hear what Christopher said to you before?” Curtis asked.

“No! I didn’t!” I frown, “What did he say?”

“He yelled, ‘Skittles and vanilla ice cream.’”

Skittles and vanilla ice cream. I know exactly what he means.

Let's talk about sects.

They’re growing up right before my eyes. Literally. I’m watching them. My students are crossing the divide from neutrons to romantically charged particles. They seem to have felt the sting of Cupid’s arrow and don’t know what to do with themselves. Valentine’s day is around the corner, but so is the 100th day of school. In past years, my students were always giddier about collecting 100 M&Ms or exercising for 100 seconds than distributing Valentines and swooning over each other. In elementary school, the 100th day of school is a milestone that students and teachers alike value, just for different reasons. Students love any day that comes with themed activities and teachers love the fact that year is more than halfway through. Teachers nationwide wake up on that morning singing, Hooray! We’re all still alive and actually doing well! Students wake up on that morning singing, Hooray! We get to eat candy, play games, and sing songs!

But this year is a little different. There are new kids on the block. A few weeks ago I projected a large world map onto the overhead and began teaching my class about the bodies of water. I got to the Pacific Ocean and said, “This is the Pacific Ocean. It borders the west coast of the United States. See it right here? The Pacific Ocean.” Then instead of seeing a gaggle of nodding heads, I heard one boy lean into his friend’s ear and whisper, “Pa-sexy Ocean.” Nice. Happy they’re taking it all in.

Which takes us to math. Recently we began our geometry unit—the study of shapes. Angles, sides, vertices… What could go wrong? Well, apparently, geometry isn’t as vanilla as I had always thought, and is in fact just as easy to corrupt as is geography. (Is it the common prefix? I am not sure.) I started by saying, “These aren’t just regular sides on the rhombus. These are parallel sides! They are like train tracks and will never run into each other. But these sides,” I said, pointing to two adjacent ones, “these are also special. They intersect. This one intersects that one; they run into each other at one specific point. When a line intersects another line, they are not parallel.” And as I was delivering this little lecture, I noticed my slight lisp on S-sounds mix dangerously with the –cts ending on the word intersects. And then there was laughter. Just a little bubble of giggling, but it was all I needed to raise my eyebrows in a telltale the-crazy-teacher-is-coming-out manner. “Off the rug. Please get up, and write me letter explaining what it is that is so funny about this lesson.” (I couldn’t have sounded more like an old-school teacher or mother if I tried. Now being a teacher myself, one of the many lessons I have learned is that teachers and parents only inflict such “adult-isms” when they’re experiencing a sudden loss of power and surge of vulnerability.) I knew the boys were snickering at me, and I had an inkling as to why, but it wasn’t until I received their letters of apology a few minutes later that my suspicions were blown out of the water. One letter read as follows:


When you said intersects I laughed because you said intersects. When you said intersects it sounded like intersects, like when two people have sects.

Like when two people have sects. Obviously, my first instinct was to laugh out loud, which I did. And the letter has proved to be the gift that keeps on giving, as I’ll spontaneously chuckle each time I think about my student’s way with words.

Then, just as I began to chalk up these incidences of immaturity to just that, I picked my class up from recess yesterday. One of the boys was extremely frustrated and couldn’t wait to tell me all about how Brian had betrayed him. If there is anything I am loath to do everyday, it’s pick up the kids and hear the laundry list of complaints that crop up from the time I drop them off at lunch and gather them up in the yard. But this time seemed different, there was a sincere urgency to Andy’s request and I was rather curious about what had come to pass between them. When we returned to the classroom and the students settled in, I pulled Brian and Andy aside.

“I told Brian a very deep secret of mine and he told Ms. Holly’s class! He told all of them my deep secret! I trusted him and he told everyone!”

“I didn’t! I didn’t tell Ms. Holly’s class!” Brian retorted.

“Ok, let’s say you didn’t tell Ms. Holly’s class. Do you know why Brian would think that?” I asked.

“Well, I turned toward them when I said it, but I didn’t mean to tell them. I just said it out loud.”

“You yelled it! You yelled it at them,” Andy protested.

“Take a deep breath, you two. Andy, would you mind telling me your secret, so I know what we’re dealing with here?”

Andy, a boy who acts fairly tough, is on the older end of the class, and has a slight strut to his step, looked up at me with widened eyes and got up on his toes. I was sure that I was about to learn some family secret, a new dirty song he made up, or how he bullies kids in the bathroom. I hesitantly leaned down, already wincing, and he whispered into my ear, “I love Jane.”

He loves Jane! That’s all! I wanted to scoop him up and jump for joy. I opted to keep my cool and nod politely. Brian got the speech and consequences he knew were coming and Andy, heart slightly bruised, returned to his seat, past Jane, looking at his feet as he walked by. I later explained to Andy that even though Jane might not feel the same way (and in fact Jane then rushed up to me and said, "Andy likes me and I really don't like him." Oh girl, you're in for a long haul!), she would be lucky to be his Valentine. He didn't seem to care. I don't blame him.

And thus, in third grade, our fuzzy understanding of love and sex begins, and I am now wondering, does it ever really clear up? As adults we often still find sex (or sects as the kids are calling it) funny and amusing, confusing and awkward. Our hearts can still be spontaneously set aflame as we realize a close friend is more than a friend—and the love can also be extinguished just as quickly when the love goes unrequited. Just as the kids in my class, some of us adults go after sects, while others go out in pursuit of love, while still others are basically just perverts when you get right down to it. At the end of the day, however, we’re all in search of something—be it sexiness, sects, or the sting of Cupid’s arrow. And all we can hope for is that we find what we’re looking for. I’m just praying all this romantic energy is snuffed out over February break with the aid of some cold showers.

Happy Valentine’s Day indeed.