The Day I Chose

1. Confessions

Photo by Cole Wyland on Unsplash

I remember the exchange on base in Pensacola. It used to have all sorts of antiques, the kind of thing you bought out of amusement more than anything. I’m pretty sure my grandma had furnished half her house from there. The last time I was there, I spent half an hour staring at this little black statue shoved between two huge ashtrays. It was a dog, a great dane I think with his nose smushed and his ears flopping around his regal head. I studied that dog like I had always known him, like we had once been friends. The dog had all four legs open and his tongue hanging out of his upside down mouth, just waiting for some statue owner to rub his belly. The smell of thousands of cigarettes, menthols, burned my nose, but I couldn’t stop staring. Underneath this dog shined the words “what goes around comes around.” My grandmother would have liked that message. Who knows, maybe the statue even came from her apartment, I can’t remember. I do remember her brown curly hair, so thin it barely diverted the light, and her frail, gnarled fingers, tinged yellow from the nicotine whose sticky sweet minty smell reminds me of her thirty years later. Maybe it’s the naivety of youth, but I don’t think I remember Grandma ever getting mad, getting upset, even when she had every right to be, when the cancer was winning or she was still working or I was being an impetuous little shit to her. I think I once told her I didn’t like her. I was maybe six at the time. It’s funny the things you remember about being a kid. 

I’ve been thinking about her. Really about her whole generation. The choices they made, the things they endured, the stiff upper lip and the pride which wouldn’t let them complain no matter how bad shit got. And things were bad, not that I really know. But you know, sometimes you know enough to know, even when you never talk about it. I’m walking down Main Street on a bitterly cold day, the kind that burns your nostrils and makes you cough just to get some warm air going through your nostrils. A small, spritish woman hides from the wind against the bank door, smoking a cigarette. It’s a menthol with that minty smell like holly, and the nicotine brings me back. Walking past me, a couple holding each other’s black mittens, her green eyes smile at me between her pink hat and her black mask, but I barely see her, too lost in the minty memories. I’m about to make a choice, or really a choice has already been made. I didn’t make it. There’s no rational decision, no other alternatives considered, and my brain didn’t decide so much as my bones did. Kind of like when I was flying planes, the decision just happened. I haven’t even had time to doubt myself, or to feel pride, fear, love, anger. I can’t even say it was heroic, because it wasn’t me, although now that it’s later I’d like to say it was heroic. Maybe it was just fate, not that I believe in that shit. For a moment I see Grandma’s smile, her yellow teeth and brown eyes staring at me knowingly, but when I turn around its just the perky blond with the green eyes and the spritish woman smoking, and neither of them seem to notice me, notice the decision I’ve just made or am about to make or maybe made in the instant between when her green eyes smiled and I realized there were other people out in the cold with me.

Confession 2