THIRTY: ZOOEY

 

Rule #7: Never be afraid to take a step back.

It felt weird being back at my house in the middle of a weekday, with nobody else around. Walking through the living room, glancing at the framed pictures on the piano and the ones hanging on the walls, my mind started racing. Memories began flashing through my mind. It wasn’t as if I was even trying to remember, it was like all these past childhood experiences were just bubbling up, rising to the surface on their own, events that I hadn’t thought about in ten years or more.

I realized that I could remember the day we’d moved in, back when I was six and there were moving boxes everywhere. I remembered my first bike, taking the training wheels off, going out in the backyard with my dad to spray-paint it pink, with stenciled lightning bolts on the side. I remembered Mom and Dad arguing about her weekend schedule, and the two of them making up afterward, and how we’d all gone out to dinner at Red Robin. It had been a Saturday afternoon, and I’d ordered macaroni and cheese and a chocolate-covered brownie bites for dessert, and they said it was okay even though I’d already had a large Pepsi with my meal, and our waitress was a blond woman and she was pregnant and she a red vest on, and I—

I was six years old.

That was eight years ago.

I could still remember what both my parents had been wearing. It was like they were standing right in front of me. The memory was crystal clear. They all were.

And there were more where that came from. Thousands more. I could hear my parents’ voices talking in the front seat when they thought I was asleep, and taste my dad’s barbecue sauce, and hear the clink and rattle of him tinkering with the engine of the old Impala that he used to drive to the office. I felt the texture of my mom’s red apron, the way it felt different when there was flour spilled on it. I could hear her leaning over my crib when I was too young to even talk, her happy voice in my ear singing that corny old Elton John tune “Your Song.” No matter how far back I looked, the memories just kept going, like stones leading across the water, going all the way back to...where? Infancy? Birth? Even before that?

Next stop, Crazy Town.

It was almost one o’clock.

I poured myself a glass of Diet Coke and took it up to my bedroom. I switched on the light and stared down at my desk.

I had work to do.