Lying on my squeaky spring wire bed, facing the stark naked wall of my campus apartment, my humble abode for the summer, I was struck by a sudden sense of coming full circle. I remembered, when I was young, maybe five or six, my parents, grandmother, and I all crammed in a small one bedroom apartment in Iowa, and my room was a corner partitioned off of the living room every. And every night I would sleep facing the blank white wall, watching the colors from the television in the living room bounce off the textured paint before me and paint all kinds of stories behind the lids of my closed eyes as I drifted further and further into my dreams. And what silly dreams I had back then. I was certain, so dead certain, that somewhere along the way I would go on a grand adventure, be presented with a challenge, a quest, and save the world and meet a cute boy who’d fall in love with me, but I wouldn’t be so easy, no, I’d play hard to get until the day he saved me from some terrible calamity and then, and only then, would I give him my fickle heart to hold for all of eternity. The empty walls have not changed; they are the same in every working class apartment across the nation, blank canvases to be adorned by the hopes, dreams of every tennent, black, white, asian, hispanic, who sees not the four walls that hold them, but beyond them, as if they were made of glass.
My feet feel as if they’ve been cut by glass every time I step in the shower. There are two long, bloody strips of exposed dermis where I suppose I’ve carelessly rubbed the epidermis away with the rough leather edges of the heels my mother loves so much but I hate with a passion. First, they make me appear about a foot taller than everyone else in family, which I find strange. But I’ve come to realize it’s because I’ve never felt bigger than anyone else in my small family save for my six year old brother. Regardless of my rebellious teenage years that fostered all kinds of strange feelings within me I now push away with disdain, I realize how much I love and respect my parents even if they don’t really know who I am. But that is a fault of my own; I could never explain myself in a language that they understood. I was a fastidious little kid who whined and cried about chinese school until they gave up and gave in. Or perhaps it was the other way around—gave in and gave up. And, in a way, I feel this is what they have done now too with my decision to no longer pursue medical school. And I fear it may come out with the same result. My feet may bleed, Mother, but does that make me a lost cause? After I’ve scratched the scabs away and the scars fade, I know I will slip my hardened feet into those shoes again.
The funny thing about walking through the Duke gardens every day is that it seems to be a breeding ground for young love. The other night, as I was walking back home after an afternoon of reading, appropriately, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I ran into a large wedding reception with various couples who have yet to celebrate “their day” weaving in and out of the trees along the numerous pathways no doubt already envisioning in their heads their own glorious weddings. And as I climbed the graveled pathway I was bowled over by a teeming procession of prom goers decked with the generic black suits that make all boys look the same, framing a string of giggling self conscious girls slumbling in heels they have not quite learned how to walk in. And as I passed along the entrance of the park, I saw a younger couple, not quite dressed for prom in their cotton shirts and capris, but the skinny little boy wore his guitar like a tie which he strummed all too intently, almost as if he was so intimadated by the girl next to him that he could not lift his eyes from the strings. As I walked by I heard the girl, who was asian, say rather fussily “My parents, I feel like they just don’t understand me” and I had to bite my lip to not burst into laughter, because I had used that very same line many times before, on the boy who had taken me to prom no less.
In Love in the TIme of Cholera I found it strange what personal interest Transito Ariza took in her son’s first, and perhaps last, Love. Perhaps it was merely a result of her own stymied dreams, unfortunate past that she projected on her child. But I know my mother and I have never touched on the subject, nor do I suspect we ever will. I’ve never shared much of my personal life with my mother, perhaps because she’s never shared much of hers with mine. But I’ve never thought to ask her about it, because her personal life was us, we were her life and we already knew everything that was going on. Or so we thought. But the truth is, I never know what my mother is thinking or what she is feeling, and I realize that throughout my life, she has never had a close friend to confide in, to vent the troubles of her life to, petty or pertinent. She kept everything to herself after she left all her close friends behind her in China. And even back then, I wonder if she ever truly confided in any of them. My mother is a very strong woman; she has many secrets no one will ever know, because she is also very proud and vary vain of her image. She, above all others, is the woman of my childhood dreams who played hard to get until the right man came along and swept her—against her will of course—off her feet and took her into the setting sun on snow white stallion. Only, her sun set before her white knight ever found his way out of the forest. And so she married my father, and had me, and then my brother twelve years later.
If I could travel back in the past, I would have liked to meet my mother back when she was young. And we would have all those conversations we never had after her dreams dried up and she grew up. And maybe then I would know how to help my bloodied feet scab over more quickly, and brush those scabs away as if they were nothing, and wear my scars like subtle silver jewelry. And maybe then my mouth wouldn’t run loose like a capricious stream as I frantically seek the comforting lulls of the sea. And maybe then I will find the cute boy of my childhood dreams.
But first, I know, I must make those colors dance behind my eyelids again. Because now, when I look at my blank wall, I see only white. No crystal clear line of the horizon stretches out before me, no vision, no plan. This is something I must remedy or my sun may very well set before I have the chance to snatch a single glimpse of light. Maybe this is why I like to keep my shades undrawn, even at night. But all I see are more and more walls stacked into the distance.
