Envy

Growing up, I was the envy of all my friends. Not because I was pretty, popular or smart, but because of my parents.

My mother and father were hip, clever, casual, fun. They were Berkeley kids of the sixties and knew how it was. There wasn't a lot to get away with, but they were there. As adults my childhood friends tell me they envied my family, though most of them had intact, solid homes.

My family was casual, but far from spontaneous. We drew heavy curtains, waited for dark to fall. We knew all the ways people love and we practiced and perfected our skills. We knew the meaning of appropriate, and when it was more charming not to be.

Now I look back on family vacation photos, and though the memories are often sweet, I am bathed in sympathy and self-pity for the skinny girl in the pictures. Her hair is never quite right and she holds herself in an uneven way. I can smell her time coming. I can feel it.

There is always something left unsaid. I race to unearth it, give it life. I'm afraid that if I continue this way, I'll lose my way. I'm following my instincts now, trying to tie up loose ends, reaching for the moments.

My family is not what it once was to me. They are skeletons and ghosts and witches and goblins. They are saints and poets and martyrs. Fiction and fact are all the same here. That's why it's hard, why the promise lies in the joints.

My mother is feline, loving, selfish. My father a dog, braced with loyalty, upheld by instinct and honor. Though I pity the foursome in the photos with Macaws on their shoulders and drinks in flower-adorned coconuts, I'm glad their story doesn't finish there. There's not great waves of light, but there are moments, I promise, just wait and see.