My So-Called Life

We were talking about what it must be like to fly First Class internationally when it came flooding back: the one time my mom almost got to fly in the confines of the fabled compartment. She didn’t get to, of course because well, things like that didn’t happen to Mrs. Woodbridge and her boys.

Instead, a dark night of the soul flashback—how factors beyond our control created abandonment, regret, bitterness. But these were just the first steps on the descending staircase into the basement and as more events were recalled and dissected, far distances and time notwithstanding, I was once again a boy uncertain of his future.

Uncertainty ruled my every waking moment and, on the nights I could recall my dreams, it did them as well. And there’s nothing to affect one’s sense of safety than a mental enemy that could not be beaten or even held at bay long enough for rest. It was like trying to keep a dense creeping fog out of a drafty old house.

A drafty old house. Yes, that seems an apt metaphor of a childhood spent in near-constant tension trying to stop the gaps that were not of your own creation. Trying and failing to co-parent a brother three years younger because—for God’s sake—you were just a boy playing the part of a man-of-the-house. Such responsibility could and did tear people apart like fresh-baked bread. It almost did me.