misremembering


sometime in the bottom of the second inning of my softball game monday night, i found myself daydreaming. i don't know what brought it on. i don't know why, at that moment, i found myself lost in my memories. i am sure it had to do with where i was. who i was with. who i wasn't with. but i found myself thinking back to when i was a kid, living in a trailer park in pinson, probably fifteen to twenty stone throws away from where i was playing shortstop. man, that trailer. it's not often that i pull up to the softball fields and don't have one of my daymares. brief, desmond-type flashes that zoom me back to a past that haunts me and defines me all at the same time.

being in the trailer, a trailer, wasn't something i was ashamed of entirely. i guess, even in middle school, i was still too young to know that a trailer park wasn't cool. to know that most people chalked me and my brother up as rednecks as our bus picked us up. to know that people probably made fun of us because our home was, in fact, mobile. i wasn't aware of any of that then, and that is probably a good thing. i had good friends who never let on that they gave a shit about where i lived. not when we were playing nintendo. not when we were playing football in the mini-front yard. not when out-of-bounds was marked by our trailer and our neighbor's. we were fucking arena football before arena football even existed. who knew? i had a mother that never let on that our house was any different than any other house, even when the weather was bad. i've told this story to some before, but i vividly and accurately remember (something i don't have the luxury of doing often, accurately remembering that is.) hearing jerry tracy tell us that if we lived in a mobile home, we needed to find a safer place. "go lay in a ditch. do not stay in the deathtrap that is your home." ok, maybe he didn't say that, but it is common knowledge, now, that tornadoes hit trailers first. always. i would look back at my mom with what was surely the most panic-stricken face a thirteen year-old could forge and ask her if we should leave. she would just look down calmly at me and tell me we would be "fine." "if it's our time, it's our time." how fucked up is that??? don't tell me that! if we stay in the trailer and the wind picks us up and hurls us into a canyon, that's on us, mom!!! jerry warned us! it was no surprise, looking back, to find out the next morning, when the weather had passed, that we were fine. she was usually right about most things.

except the men she chose.

we all need love. and we all need attention. it's how god made us. i believe this. and i believe it's a good and great thing. that need. that search for a companion that might make us whole. that might make us better. that might bring us into closer relationship with our creator. some of us choose wisely. some of us, poorly. mom? she chose poorly. many times. i am glad that i am old enough to not hold those choices against her any more. without them, i wouldn't be me. it is true that, without them, i may not have daymares every time i drive through pinson, but that, too, is something i hold dear now, even if it's painful. it's just a bump in the road now. not the warp-zone to hell it used to be. and that means i've grown. that means i've gotten stronger. or it means i've gotten better at compartmentalizing and avoiding. either way is ok.

my conscious mind flashed forward in time for me to cleanly field a ground ball and make a nice throw to first. and as the inning ended i glanced over my shoulder to give a nod to my past, telling it to have a nice week and that i would see it again next monday.

elfreth johnson.