Photocopied Memories

When looking back, my first memory is that of fear.

My second memory is that of abandonment.

                Being that both of these memories are heightened by an extreme emotional distress they remained clear for most of my years. Now, they are more akin to memories of memories. They no longer have their clarity and remain with me like a childhood drawing that has been photocopied too many times.  Regardless, I cannot deny their oily influence on my life.

                The first memory is that of me and my cousin sitting at the top of the stairs leading to the basement of the rundown house my parents were renting. Lying at the bottom of the stairs is my Little People Ferry Boat. The reason for the disastrous journey down the rickety stairs is long gone but we were frozen in terror. There was a beast waiting downstairs to eat us.

Not metaphorically, but literally.

             Some days prior, my father’s boa constrictor, Ziggy, had escaped his cage. My parents were aware he was lost somewhere in the house and were waiting for him to begin to hunt for food in order to find him. I recall having seen the snake consume the mice that were bred in the small glass cube next to Ziggy’s tank. The blind newborns squirming restlessly as their naked forms searched for their mother’s teats. I knew that they were living only to be consumed whole at a later time and I had been told not to grow attached to the creatures. My mind told me that I would face a similar fate if I dared to go down the stairs. My cousin was not convinced my desperate attempts to convince her to sacrifice her life in the name of Fisher Price so we sat there staring at the shipwreck.

                The second memory was not initially one of abandonment. It was one of a precocious four year old version of me sitting in between my parents in our truck as it idled in front of my grandparents’ home. My mother and father speak in quiet tones as I wait for my mother to exit the vehicle. I hear my father mention his plan to fill the tires with air after he drops my mother and me off. Sensing an opportunity to finally contribute to the conversation, I spill out the beginning of a knock-knock joke.

                The pivotal moment of the door greeting arrives and I announce that the person behind the knocking is “Aaron.” The punch line arrives with “Air in the tire!” and the tension is lifted in the vehicle for a brief moment. My parents coldly say their goodbyes and we head into the house where I would be living for the next four years.

                The joke becomes a frequent story between my mother, me and anyone willing to listen to the story of when a four year old formed his first joke. As time passed, I gained more awareness of the situation that had bred the joke and for the next decade, it was the final memory of seeing my father in person. In attempt to clean himself of the methamphetamine, cocaine, alcohol and other substances that had led to my parents’ divorce, he had escaped to California to live with a brother. In the intervening years, a small pittance of a check would arrive for my mother from him. The weekends following these rare events led to ordering pizza and renting a VHS player and a few movies from the gas station near our apartment. Never a phone call. Never a picture.

Just ham and pineapple pizza to remind me that I was the only boy in the neighborhood that did not have a father.