“well hello there
my it’s been a long, long time
how’m i doing?
well i guess that i’m doing fine
it’s been so long now
but it seems now
that it was only yesterday
gee ain’t it funny
how time slips away”
the alarm went off at six, the morning gray slightly illuminating the bedroom curtains. i throw the covers off and throw my legs off the side of the bed and before i even come to, i remember how differently i climbed out of bed on this very day, twenty five years ago, a wednesday it was.
twenty five years ago climbing out of bed young and alive and beside myself, i remember it was gray that morning as well, though warmer. i sat alone in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal and then i put on my jeans and a nice shirt and my black shoes and my old jean jacket, a blue knapsack over my shoulder, train tickets and a toothbrush and toothpaste and some magazines inside.
after months apart, i stood mere hours away from seeing the woman i loved for the first time since the prior december 19th.
she was flying into kennedy that afternoon, and i was riding the rails down there from upstate to wait for her at the arrivals gate.
&&&
i throw on my bathrobe and tiptoe out of the bedroom and on downstairs, trying my best not to wake anyone. i like to tell people i am in better shape now than i was twenty years ago, as vain as it sounds, but the reason i like the sound of it is because it is true. but it comes at a price, paid every morning when the bills come due for all those workouts as i inch out of bed, and every inch of me feels closer to twice my age then to twenty years ago.
i pour a cup of coffee, keeping one eye on the clock, evie wants me to wake her up at 6:30 sharp. she has a basketball tournament close to forty-five minutes away, first game at 8:00 sharp. i read the news, airstrikes in syria, but rosenstein not fired yet. the aches in the bones slip away with each sip of coffee, but the ache in the heart goes nowhere.
more than ten years after she passed on, days like this don’t come along very often. she flits in and out of my consciousness every day, but mostly she stays for a few seconds here, a few more there, in the few blank spaces that come along in days filled with this new life, what with work and four kids and another love the main focus now.
the first couple years after she died, even the minor anniversaries would torment me, but now, many of those landmarks slip by unnoticed. but not today. not twenty five years since april 14, 1993. this one, i can tell before that first cup goes halfway down, is gonna sting all day.
&&&
i finish the first cup, pour another, and then creep upstairs.
evie is fast asleep.
god, i think, she really does look just like lauren.
i gently shake her on the shoulder.
“it’s six thirty.”
it takes a few seconds, but she opens her eyes. i stand by the door. i want to make sure she doesn’t fall back asleep.
“dad,” she says with a laugh, “i’m up. you can go drink your coffee.”
i head downstairs and sit down in the living room and look out the window, drinking in the peace and quiet and the coffee.
i think back a quarter century: i don’t remember much of the ride down on amtrak from albany to penn station, but i remember the ride out to kennedy on the a train, half empty in mid-afternoon. i remember taking a bus the rest of the way there to the british airways terminal.
i remember checking a monitor to see the flight was on time. i remember going into a men’s room to brush my teeth, i remember checking a monitor again to see the flight had landed, and lord how i remember the sight of her coming through the gate, her luggage behind her, that brown hat on her head, the look on her face when she turned and saw me waiting there, and the feeling that came over me when i felt my arms around her once again.
i remember how she felt in my arms, and i remember the certainty that i would someday marry her.
&&&
sheila comes down to gives us good-bye hugs and to wish evie good luck. we walk out the back door to the car, a cool breeze in the air and an upstate gray in the sky, no monotone gray, but a gray streaked with every shade of gray one could imagine, and then a few more on top of that.
evie looks at the clock in the car.
“seven oh five dad. we were supposed to leave at seven.”
“i think we’ll be fine,” i reply.
“yeah and also, it was 6:31 when you woke me up, not 6:30,” she says with a laugh.
jesus, i think, but you are lauren incarnate.
we drive on in silence, up route four as it runs along the hudson. i feel that old familiar pit in my stomach. it’s been awhile, i think.
we drive on, not a word between us. i turn on the radio and tune into an old upstate staple, the weqx coffehouse, acoustic songs for the early weekend hours.
we drive on and i see a sign for a sod farm and i remember driving up this same road with her mother on the doorstep of my fortieth birthday, on our way to an overnight in the adirondacks, evie still in diapers, i think.
we drive on past the exit for the saratoga battlefield, the turning point of the american revolution, they say, one of the most important battles in the history of warfare. i wonder what ben and the boys would think of us now, two hundred and fifty two years later and just as close to autocracy now as we were then.
lauren and me went to the battlefield once, and when we left, we concocted this story where i was a young revolutionary and she, being a brit of course, was the daughter of a british general, and we’d fallen in love, and carried on in secret, until i was killed in the battle, and we spent a a century and change wandering the after life until we wound up in the same bar in albany one night in 1992.
&&&
we drive on in silence. i look out at the river, the earth, the trees. winter is holding on with a vengeance, and it has beaten every color other than brown and gray into submission. the songs bleed into one another and then i hear a voice:
“well hello there, my it’s been a long, long time...”
yes, it has, i think. twenty five years to be exact.
and yes, i guess that i’m doing fine.
“it’s been so long now, but it seems now that it was only yesterday...”
only yesterday, that moment at kennedy feels like seconds ago, not twenty five years, and as i hear the guy sing and the guitar play i can feel myself choking back the tears, and i want to tell evie about what happened on this day back then, but i can’t bring the words forth.
i think of how much lauren would like to be in that car with us, and i hope, but have trouble believing, that she is.
&&&
i wanted to tell someone all day, but i never found the moment. as the day wears on, i figure it will fade. but now, in the middle of the night, i still want to tell someone. i decide to walk outside for a smoke. the wind howls, the cold bites my fingers as if it is january. winter is hanging on with a vengeance.
so is memory.
i want to tell someone, but everyone here is asleep. i want to tell someone, and it’s late, but whatever time it is, now that i’ve found the moment, i guess i’ll have to tell you………..