Memoir;

Unmarked road

I slowly started to determine that there were two kinds of people in the world, those that drove straight, head on, through my road and those that took their time. It was obvious that there was no way to win with the road itself. You either hurt your car on the various bumps and dips when you drove slowly or risked hurting your front bumper as you skidded past the lumps.

I didn’t know what category I fit into.

I would watch Arik as he slowly tried to maneuver his way around all of the dips in the road that was so worn away from the years of trying to live up to a community that was growing too fast for it to keep up and the rain that continued to carve it leaving a hard mark within its poor soul, much in the way I imagine the grand canyon was made.

I saw the way that Bryan drove so fast on it and I felt the bumper hit harder and harder every time. It always felt bad when they drove that fast, like they had somewhere better to go, somewhere better to be than my road. I took it to heart. I hated it when people would drive on my road. I always felt that you needed to walk on it just as I had done since I could remember.

That road was the epitome of everything I never wanted to leave and everything I never wanted to become.

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I took my first breath in ****, california the night of January ** 1992. My mother wanted me with all her heart and after trying for 8 years to conceive my parents got their wish in a 7 pound ball of trouble with the lung capacity of an opera singer. I was the apple of my father’s eyes and he found it appropriate to show of his pride and joy to everyone and everything with a heartbeat. We lived in ****** for only a year of my life. I was so small that I can’t remember things of that past, it’s but a faint memory to me, a past of which my parents every so often have to remind me of but nothing that I would call my own. We moved to *****, only a 15 minute drive from *****, because my mother wanted me to be safe in a little town, soon I grew to love my little town. It was so hidden and secret. Nothing bad ever happened; we lived with the doors wide open at night. Everyone knew everyone they were all friends or enemies. Here they hoped that I would gain more a sense of togetherness, the feeling of being small town raised, and those feelings that one never forgets when they grow older.

            Little did they know that this is where I would begin to detach myself from the fabric that kept me so safe in secure in the blanket. The foundation to the life that I live today was laid that day, the day that my father first tried to conquer the street with no name [[there was no sign that ever even once held its name, we all just knew where the street was it had the power of just existing and everyone knowing what it was like breathing]]. At the time I would never give it a second thought or call it “mine” but one day it would fulfill every promise it had ever granted me and I sensed it in my bones.

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            I picked up things quickly, I started walking when I was only 9 months old, maybe I was trying to run way from something… As soon as I was stable enough to control my own series of falls, I would walk up and down the road hoping not to fall or run into less than amicable dogs. Always thinking, always letting every breath barely escape, after only a few minutes I was calm and collected. Here is where I would learn to solve my problems and realize things I had only been but blind to before.

  -  -

When I was still so pure and new, I discovered how much I loved music, how good it made me feel and how much I loved to actually sing along to songs even when I couldn’t even talk.

Speech was an easy thing to pick up and start molding within me. I consider it one of my many talents now, a tool that isn’t so shiny now for I use it ever day in my pointed words and the nails that hold relationships together. I picked up my native tongue pretty easily. Spanish was so smooth and rich it rolled of my tongue. I could use it so well with such a wonderful accent I could only image what it felt like being able to finally express myself and in a language that tickled my ears because it was so beautiful and carried a tone of its own. I picked up English on my own by watching television. I would sit there and compare words thinking to myself I wonder what that word is in Spanish …I wonder how I could use this new language to mold my feelings and let more people know how I feel. It didn’t take me long to be infused with the new tongue slowly I let go of Spanish my once home for this new promise and slowly I let go of everything I had, and gained so many new things. I grew more as a person and an individual but I certainly diverged from the path I had been on.

School was so simple, for I had already acquired this new tool before I even started kindergarten. It was like a dream for me, a wonderfully happy place where for once I felt that I could do something grand. I excelled rapidly. Most of my teachers became aware of my problem of being a perfectionist right way when I would refuse to do anything quickly or sloppily but even then I slowly made my way up through the grades.

My music ability saved me on day from freezing. I had been standing outside the gates of the school in the cold waiting to get into a classroom when my music teacher offered me a seat in her classroom. Inside was a class of students standing ready at instruments. Suddenly then they started playing and to me it was the most wonderful music that I had ever heard. At the end of the rehearsal, she invited me to join the group because she felt that I was special enough for it, how grand to be considered special enough for something so amazing. I took the invitation, bought a recorder ,convinced myself that I was worth it and walked into the next rehearsal with my head held high and sat down with all the children. I was the youngest member at only 7 [[everyone else being 9 and up]]. I struggled to pick things up but soon found I had a knack at playing wonderful music. I followed this new found talent and it led me down the road to choir. There I also found out that I had a beautiful voice, I even followed the new found talent to the doorstep of the band room where I picked up the trombone. I consider it a blessing all these musical abilities that I discovered they really have opened doors for me now in the present things that I would have ever thought of when I was younger.            

Elementary school went by so slow but nothing would prepare me for how fast middle school would roll out of my life, so fast that sometimes I find my memory straining itself to remember even the simplest things about those years. I entered honors program because I was supposedly smart and I needed to get involved with all of the things that would get me farther in life. But I think that the most important change and the one defining moment in my life had to have been when I discovered poetry, from a close friend at the time. The way she could spin words into a lovely cloths so rich and delightful like the purist satin that warmed you from the inside out. I wanted to be able to do that I took to writing. When I first picked up pen and paper I can assure you that I never once dreamed that it would grow to one day be the only thing that I cared for and hope to achieve. I spent many days exploring new depths of my road as I would verses in my head. By the time I was allowed to travel longer distances by myself I discovered another worn out road that was connected to mine, it was always such and adventure walking from my road to that one writing poems within me. It was my own piece of heaven safely waiting in the folds of rural America.

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Starting high school was one of the things that I had always dreaded. All my life I knew that soon it would be time to actually grow up but I wanted to be able to stay a child forever, living under a peter pan mentality, but I didn’t know how I actually could have done it. I knew this was the beingning of the end one that I had to take and I did. I went through my first year amazingly; it made no dent in me. Nothing happened and nothing needed to be changed. I got all A’s and no one could stop me at all with this. I think I have just gone through all the years expecting something worse than what was actually going to happen. I always had this idea in the back of my head that so many things would go wrong but the truth was that nothing every happened to me I always got by with what I needed.

The change is ever present. Some days more than others, but it’s always there. I work on my poems and strive to be better as a writer but also as a person. If I walk this road hundred times I swear I will always find a new concave in it whether it is up or down. If nothing will ever be the same again I know my poems serve as a permanent reminder of everything and my music stands as the last shreds of childhood I dare to hold on to. One day I will change the world, you just wait and see.

As for the people in my life those that touched my road every day,  I never knew how to thank them, how to tell them that I appreciated that they would take the time to drive me home even though they made faces at me when they had to slow down. Sometimes I wonder if Arik knows how much he means to me, the person who has been there always since the first day he drove down my road to see me in the early stages of our relationship. I wonder if Bryan knows I hate when he zooms past everything, it’s almost disrespectful, but I let him get away with it because he is my best friend. I wonder what my parents think every time the hit a dip in the road. Sometimes I watch their faces, unchanging, like they have traveled this road more than I will ever know but possibly never in the same way.

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When I finally learn to drive, when I finally want to try and make things happen moving on from the familiar desert breezes, I think that I will take my time driving down the road. But I don’t believe I will go home. I will go past it, without a second thought, out into the open highway. The one that leads north and south, found at the mouth of my road, a place so different it would only be time to burst out of my shell as soon as I touched it. But I won’t care for silly things such as what way I pick to turn the wheel,  just that I grew up enough to understand how much I owe my worn out dirt road.