As one known for being a clutch performer when the spoken word is needed, it is unsettling when the words are nowhere to be found. Such is the quandary I find myself in days removed from news that was not surprising, yet still difficult to process, compartmentalize, and...
To recap, taking on the role of emcee is not a stretch for the Acting Citizen. Even given mere hours to prepare, being glib before a crowd was never difficult. This past week, I wasn’t confronted with a crowd, but rather an audience of one. A husband, father, and grandfather, dealing with the loss of his wife of 60 years, and I was a verbal failure. Even when I was introducing my wife Andra (see The Loneliest Liberal, December 2019) to him, he had more words than I, offering, “James was always around.”
And I was. The house of my friends, situated between my two homes, one belonging to one parent, the other to another parent, was a place to step off the rope pulled taught by competing interests. And I did, often.
Tonka toys, shiny, bright, and yellow
A giant puppy, and a bigger, blue bug
Chairs high in a tree with views of the town
A choo-choo track on the belly of my friend
And red mustaches left by
The Kool-Aid she makes for us
PB & J, tuna fish, bologna and cheese,
The daily specials as clear in the mind
Fifty years on
Tonka toys, faded, rusted, and yellow
A giant dog, and a smaller one inside
The giant tree that is never climbed and
A railroad behind the house of my friend
The same railroad that runs behind the
Other house, where my friend’s friend lives
For now he has two addresses
But really it’s three
And childhood ends, first in the heart
Later it’s official, the addresses
Accumulate, and she remains with him
Our generation marries, and those end
First in the heart, later it’s official
Yet they remain together
Day after day, decade after decade
The giant dog no longer
The giant tree still unclimbed
A railroad long gone
One address now
And she, always there, always
A fixed point of a past that had
None of those, gone
Only visions of bologna and cheese
Kool-Aid moustaches
And Tonka toys
| Copyright © 2022 by James Knudsen |
I don’t think it had occurred to me before that (of course!) some of my high school classmates’ children would become playmates and lifelong friends of my Latin teacher’s son, who was, after all, born about the same year as my own son. I never met the members of Dana’s family, but I remember her clearly and dearly.
ReplyDeleteThose memories, oh James, I remember too, as I was on your shirt tail more than once....xo
ReplyDelete