You are about to read a chapter from ‘American’, a brief book about a brief life story. Not all chapters will be sent to your inbox, but all will be posted within two months. So, if you enjoy this read, please keep an eye out for many more to come.
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2005
“Mama, I’m never gonna be in second grade again,” I cried into my mother’s lap as she sat at her desk.
“You’re supposed to be happy, sweetie, it’s your last day of school.”
“I know, but I liked second grade. And summertime means my birthday’s next week, so I’m not gonna be in second grade ever again and I’m not gonna be seven ever again.” A fresh wave of sobs rang out, as I set my face back down on her lap in grief.
Inconsolable.
Gifted in the art of childhood fears: the depth of the sky, aging, apocalypse, death in the family. Often, my mom would find herself making promises of living to be 139, so that I could live to be 102 and never have to face the reality of losing her. All fifty pounds of me would crawl into her lap as she watched television and look up at her with the sorrow of understanding and say “Mom, you have to promise me we’re gonna be old ladies together.”
That was almost twenty years ago, but I feel no different from that girl. We are happening at once; she is pleading for the endurance of her family while I sit here, four hours away from my nearest blood relative. She may as well be sitting next to me on this couch right now, begging me to stop getting older, furious with me for not having learned, in all these years, to stop time.
We’ve lost so many people since that day in second grade - of course she’s mad at me. I didn’t do anything to stop it. I didn’t hold on to their ethereal hands and pull them back from the cliffs of death. Why have I bothered to grow older if I was never going to learn this trick? What have I wasted my time doing, if I haven’t learned to overthrow the ways of God and physics? Of course she’s mad at me.
It’s the same anger I have every time I long for a day off and then, finding one, see that I still don’t have time to save the world and, in fact, hardly have time to write a story about saving the world, but rather only a brief chapter in a book of a thus far brief life.