4:48 a.m.
Pasadena, California ~ Saturday, August 16, 2014
Promises were capricious little things.
I tossed alone in our king-sized bed, sleep having eluded me for much of the night. But I found myself studying the ever-changing shape of the shadows on our bedroom’s north wall and thinking. Mostly about promises. Those I’d made to my mom and dad, especially after my brother’s disappearance. Those my sons had made to me.
These roles we all played—be it parent or child—lent themselves to the creation of new promises with some regularity. Vows of varying kinds that we professed to those we loved and, yet, sometimes couldn’t keep.
They didn’t feel like lies at the time we made them. Rarely were they spoken insincerely or with the intent to mislead. But, likewise, these oaths often proved unrealistic, especially when the broader context was taken into account.
Like the way Charlie promised at age nineteen and a half (oh, yes, I remembered the moment distinctly) that he would never, ever speed on the Santa Monica Freeway. His broken right arm and his totaled red Hyundai sports car on the shoulder of Interstate 10 told a different story, of course. But I knew even then that he hadn’t been purposely deceptive.
Sometimes we meant to be honest with each other, but life conspired against us.
Sometimes things just happened.
Looking back, I saw how that had been the case when Donovan and I arrived in Chicago in the summer of ‘78. How, once we’d taken just one small dangerous detour, the trajectory drove us increasingly further away from our original path of relative safety.
The metallic marble in our private pinball game was set in a different direction by a barely imperceptible shift in our angle of approach.
Was that what happened to Charlie this week, too?
I shuddered and pushed myself out of bed—no longer willing to fight the futility of sleep. My staying quiet in the dark had only led to nightmares while awake, and I didn’t need to court them.
I flipped on the light, and the wall shadows disappeared. Didn’t mean they were really gone, though. Only that—for a short while—I wouldn’t be able to see them as clearly.