Shhhh...

Shhhh…now tell me a story. Slow. Smooth. Wrap me in your words. Intoxicate me with your experience. Take me. Take me to where you’ve been. Whisper where you’re going. Caress me with the sounds your ears make love to. Sing me the song of when you were young. When you were fearless. Speak to me of the beauty in isolated lands. Words whirling around us, wrapping us in identity. Now tell me the story of who you are. Tell me who you are when you are not who you are. Seduce me with your stories. Shhhhh… Seduce me.

Moment of Being

Like many people, I have my routine. Every morning I cross the street, which isn’t really a street. It’s the tracks for the rapid-transit train. The café is my refueling station. It was mid-November and I was on day three at a new job. I ordered my drink and stood at the counter waiting for my mocha. And I watched. I watched all the people around me. So many of them were faceless—even the ones who in pictures would be considered beautiful. A busy café full of people, some with outwardly attractive appearances, and yet few had faces. They all looked the same: the men and women, tall and short, fat and skinny, attractive and ugly, young and old. There really was no differentiation between them. They were all shells. They were closed tight. No one smiled. No animation. No one was alive. The few people who actually had faces were the ones who smiled. They were the ones who interacted with the people around them. They were the ones who touched someone else. They were the beautiful ones.

After I got my drink, I walked outside where there were maintenance workers trimming trees, construction workers working on our building’s seismic retrofit, and I watched the train zip by, and as it did so, it created a breeze that was just strong enough to breathe life into a flock of dried leaves, enabling them to flutter about, dancing and swirling. I smiled. God , it’d been a long time since I noticed the leaves dance.

Son of Wonder Woman

When I was four, I thought my mother was invincible. I watched her do things I thought only dad could do. After he left, I saw mom change leaky pipes, work on her car, and stand up to guys who disrespected her. Sure, I missed dad, but I always wanted to be strong like mom. Nothing stopped her; she never seemed to sleep. I really thought she might have been wonder woman. And I was her son!

At eight, I realized how much other people loved mom and how beautiful they thought she was. They gravitated to her. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we rarely needed anything, and there was never a shortage of people willing to help. Men were always around the house working on things for my mom. People of all ages and races dropped by for mom’s wisdom and advice. Our weekends were busy attending parties and holidays were insane with obligatory appearances. People basked in my mother’s radiance. I wanted people to love me like they loved my mom.

I was twelve when I learned that people were disposable to my mother. It began with my dad. Dad walked out and mom filed for divorce the next day. She never looked back. Then there was Tim, who lied to my mom about something. She cut him from her life—forever. There were people who seemed like great friends to my mom. They thought the world of her and treated her with total respect, but one day she would say that she just didn’t want to have anything to do with them. We never saw them again. I began to realize that mom could go months without having any contact with people she supposedly loved. If something or someone proved useless to my mom, she saw no reason to keep it around, and it was as if it never existed.

I sat at the kitchen table with my daughter as she practiced writing her name when the phone rang. A man with a thick European accent first apologized then said that my mother’s body had been found in a run-down room. The doctors estimated that she had been dead about a week before anyone found her. He asked me if I wanted to make arrangements to have her body returned home.

No. No, thank you.

I was 42 when I realizes my mother was disposable.