Orioles Eye View (A Short Story)

I was 5 years old when I sat in a tree with 7 trunks all tied together at the base meeting the dirt that lined the property between my new yard & a wide open cornfield that still had stalks cut down to the root from last autumn’s harvest. I didn’t know it then but my father would decide to cut down those trees that called to me the day we first named the property home, as he renovated the house that my grandfather owned & where my mother spent her youth. We lived temporarily in a 5th wheel parked outside next to my new house, with my new baby brother in a new small town where I would go to a new school that fall & meet new people & have all sorts of new feelings.

I have moments, to this day, where I get caught in a cosmic gaze. Enthralled by my surroundings I paralyze time to freeze frame a memory that’s being lodged so deep into my being that I am swept into a continuum & watching the unfolding from an orioles eye view.

That’s how it felt as I captured a moment in time as I sat in that tree in the early spring — my favorite time of the year— I could smell the damp soil & the coolness of the fresh air. I felt a freedom so big in my tiny body as I soaked in the spaciousness of our new yard. All this for my family, I felt a swirling of fate wrap around me.

Captivated by nature that encompassed my new home. No paved streets, no houses lined side to side like the mobile home park I had moved from. No loud cars passing by. No tall buildings in the distance. Just wide open spaces between me & nature. I hoped the newness of it all would bring us closer together, like we used to be. Me, mom & dad all nestled together in a tight squeeze. I felt the cold drift sneaking in long before our first winter in our new home.

My mother pulled away first, maybe it was her childhood home that sent her far far away. She was gone but still home. It felt like I was in a long distance relationship with her. Sometimes she would reappear & I could reach her again. I could feel her closeness again & just like that she would fade away into darkness. Like she was lost in a cornmaze of memories. Like the ghosts that lived with her there long ago would hold her hostage & I couldn’t talk to her anymore.

My father pulled away soon after, but he choked the life out of himself by holding on too tightly. He was trying so hard, putting in so much effort with the new house. Maybe if he could make it perfect he could feel at ease in the life he was building for himself, for us. But the lie he kept buried within himself was suffocating him. It was blurring his vision & blinding him. The demons that lived inside him would pierce like bullets on my skin when he unleashed the beast that dwelled in his chest like a forbidden friend. The man of steel he called himself would retreat so far inside his mind that he became unreachable like I was talking to him through prison plated glass that separated him from me. Our hands would touch but I couldn’t feel him anymore. He was held captive in a cold cell that I wasn’t allowed to enter. An invisible sign stapled to his chest that read: no children allowed.

All the new space had created even more separation & desolation. The distance grew deeper & stretched the width of the fields that surrounded our home. Was it a home? Or just a house? Were we a family? Or just residents occupying the space?

I loved my new home & when summer came the icebox that sat back off the gravel drive on Freese road that shut me out, that froze my nervous system & isolated my heart in a time capsule finally began to thaw. The warming sun shone through the glass picture window that framed the living room where the dead would came back to life. Just like the buds on the trees & how the grass grew in 5 different shades of greens. The vibrant yellow of dandelions that filled the yard that my father insisted were pesky weeds that needed to be mowed over & killed. To me they symbolized renewal, hope & the ending of darkness & the beginning of a season of light.

Our summers were filled with endless activities & long days of busy bees flying from one thing to the next. There was no time to fight. No time to bicker. No time to argue over bills or kids. No time to spend in each others company for more than a few hours at a time. There was a safety in summertime. A promise of peace that I longed to hold on to for dear life as the days crept from 9pm sunsets into 4pm descents.

They were good at hiding their pained distance in the summertime. Like the heat was medicine for their permanent insufferable cold. The comforting warmth I felt from summertime came from the earth, not from them. I could bathe in the summer light for hours. Feel the ground hold me with my bare feet hugging the grass & the sensation of affection between my toes. I could feel the connection to something bigger than me when I played in the yard. I could get lost in the vastness of it all. Like that piece of land was my own sanctuary where I could run wild & free.

But why did I feel so trapped even though I had all this to myself? Most children would die to have what I did. Why couldn’t I just be happy? Why couldn’t I feel the joy that once filled my breath with life? The freedom, the space, the time to play, I had it all. But somehow it wasn’t enough & my mind wouldn’t let me have the happiness & over time my body wouldn’t either. There I was frozen lifeless on freese road. & even as the summers rolled in year after year, I too caught their permanent & insufferable cold. I lived & breathed their sickness & it became mine too. Passed down like a dysfunctional gene on the family tree. I was rotting on the inside. Decaying right before their eyes. But they couldn’t see because they too had already rotted & decayed, had already become lifeless & dead to life within themselves.

The walking dead was raising me & I became a zombified version of myself. I was there still walking, talking, breathing & laughing. I was still alive in a sense but I wasn’t actually living. I was pretending. Just like they taught me. Just like they lived, but also lied. My mother mummified by her past & my father imprisoned by his pain. They created new life but couldn’t keep it alive, couldn’t give it the environment or light it needed to grow & thrive. Instead it died right before their eyes while still alive. How could they give me life when they were dead inside?

They couldn’t & so I died. On freese road. My mind & body frozen in time. Years passed by like a monologue of melancholy. I couldn’t move past my past. I was taunted by the ghosts that held my parents hostage all those years. My lifeless frame now a haunted house left abandoned & betrayed.

In the blink of an eye my life was passing by. Quicker than a fatal illness when my father called me back to Freese road on a cold & dark January night where he told me with saddened eyes & deteriorated bones he had 1 year until he was sentenced to die. Like a prisoner sent to the electric chair it sent high voltages of pain through my body. A wake up call like a defibrillator shocking my system. I cried & ran to the front door of my childhood home. Like I wanted to run away from the pain all those years before. But instead I crumpled to the floor in the corner & cried as I too began to die, or rather come back to life.

That call back home changed my life. & just as my father was slowly falling apart, piece by piece, so was my home. The house that built me was cracking at the foundation, uprooting my pain that I buried like a secret in the cold dark basement. My chest caved in under the pressure of my own weight that I carried like a 350 pound bag of trauma. I couldn’t hold it all on my own anymore. I couldn’t bare the baggage that had been left for me to unpack.

I felt the swirling of fate I had recalled wrapping around me all those years ago as a child when we first moved in. Like the news of his death wasn’t news at all, but just the removal of the blinders I had put on so long ago in order to survive the sickness they had given me. I don’t hold it against them, well at least not now, but I did & I was still holding it against myself, using it like a weapon to beat myself to death. It was killing me, the weight of their cold.

It jolted me from a slumber of disease that I could no longer ignore. It sent me spiraling into a frenzy of uncertainty that rocked my very foundation. Cracked my heart that had been frozen in time wide open & I bled & bled & bled for what felt like months on end. I thought it would never stop, the flood of pain I was drowning in. But I did as soon as I sat in it & let it baptize me, let it wash me clean until I was like fresh soil ready to be planted with seeds of hope & health.

I started to water those seeds I had been given by the higher power that reached down to me in a fated time of loss, in a time of complete destruction of all I had ever known. God gave me the environment & light I always needed but never received & I let His Love bring me back to life. Slowly over years of tears & faith I was remade, regrown & reborn with a warmth that allowed my seeds to blossom into full grown stalks that were ready to harvest.

The fruits that had grown inside of me had ripened & were ready to be picked & I plucked them one by one, filling myself full with the sweetness of labor that had gone into the process of my renewal. Just like all those years ago as the dandelions peeked through the green grass, signaling to me that a season of light was here, I was in a new Home, in a new place, in a new space & full of new Life.

I am no longer dead inside. No longer sick with a permanent & insufferable cold. But thriving & alive in the comforting warmth of light from my own Soul.