HOPECRAFT:
Directing the mind toward optimistic tendencies in an attempt to maintain psychological normalcy within oneself.
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“It is not certain that everything is uncertain.”
Blaise Pascal
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“Alex! Hey! Stop, alright? You gotta slow down, kiddo. You’re gonna get hurt.”
One of my earliest memories is of my dad and I playing tag in the house. It was a rare thing to do, (Mom never let us do it in the house, for fear of the destruction we’d cause) which made it significantly more enjoyable.
So, of course, I went on racing. I knew my dad had to be tired by that point- We’d been playing for nearly two hours straight, and it was way beyond my set bedtime of 8 PM. But we kept on going. I wanted to stretch as much time as possible out of it as I could. Mom only took business trips on very rare occasions, and she was due back that night.
Tragedy struck when I rounded a corner with way too much momentum and noticed far too late that the hallway I’d chosen to escape down held a treacherous end: A solid concrete pot that held up our aboristic pride and joy: A beautiful weeping fig, tended to absolute perfection, stretching nearly twice my height. It really was a pretty tree, which sucked, because it was soon knocked from its place on a small platform to the floor, spilling dirt and dead leaves to the ground in what would have to have been an awful mess to clean up. At that moment though, my biggest concern was over my newly shattered forearm, and not my family’s pet project.
My mom told the story sometimes, during parties she brought me along to, from my dad’s point of view. I remember it differently, of course, but it was always pretty close. The nigh-on frictionless contact between my socks and the hardwood floor left me without an adequate brake, and with a massive crash, I smashed into the pot. Apparently, the first thing he’d heard was the skittering of dirt, shortly followed by a deep, breathy inhale, before the air was sliced by a screeching yelp as my pain registered. Next thing he knew, I was getting an X-ray, and the nurse was complimenting me on my T-rex pajamas as she checked over the equipment. Mom showed up as I got the cast (In bright pink, because my favorite color was blue, but I was a contrarian), and we all drove home as a happy family.
The last part’s true. But she cut a lot of stuff out. Like how, when we got home and I was put to bed with flurries of forehead kisses and gentle hugs from both my parents, she screamed at him for what must have been ten straight minutes. And how my dad started to yell back- Something he never did, being a self-proclaimed pacifist, something that annoyed her beyond comprehension- About how he was sick of her insisting everything was his fault, and that he was leaving. When she asked if he’d be able to drive me to school the next day, the only thing I heard was the jangle of keys and the front door slamming. She didn’t even bother to go after him.
My dad died the same night. The police said it was a car crash. Someone was speeding, not paying attention, probably high or drunk or texting or something, and smashed the side of his sedan from it’s parked spot in the emergency breakdown area through the barrier and off the side of the cliff, into the forest. His body got discovered sixty yards from the decimated wreck.
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That’s what they said happened, at least. I never really believed them. Not then, not now.
My mom did. The worst part is that she never even seemed to care. I’m pretty sure she always hated him, in some way. Maybe because he dragged her away from work, the one thing she actually loved. Or maybe because she couldn’t get him to quit his job, just to take care of me. Maybe there was something else.
It didn’t matter much. She basically raised me with a pole from then on; We didn’t have mother-son playdates, she didn’t go to PLC meetings, there was no homemade cookies for bakesales. She woke me up at seven, dropped me off at school, and picked me up. When I was ten, she enrolled me in cross country so she could spend more time at work. When I was fifteen, she sent me to a private school for “gifted kids”- whatever that means- claiming that it was “rigorous and character building”. Last month, when I turned seventeen, she decided that I’d gotten enough motherly attention and packed her bags, heading to work in Beijing.
Look. My life doesn’t really suck. Actually, I’m real damn lucky. The first week, she left me with a few thousand dollars and a list of numbers to call if someone bothered me about the house. After that, a credit card appeared in the mail, with a note on how to use it and what limits she’d imposed on me with it (There weren’t any x’s or o’s or I love you, Alex’s on there, but it did the job, which is my mother’s style) and a set of keys for a car I was supposed to pick up from the dealership the next day. Seriously, my life doesn’t suck. My mom isn’t around, and my dad is dead, but I live alone in a big house and have what basically amounts to unlimited spending. What else could a teenager need?
A lot, it turns out. See, ten years later, the whole ‘dad died in a horrible hit and run accident’ still hasn’t settled. I live in a small town- on an island, actually, off the coast of Connecticut- and the concept that somebody could kill someone like my dad- someone who I always thought to be a pretty damn respected guy- and decide to do nothing about it irks me the wrong way.
That lead to literal and metaphorical digging. Mostly literal, to start. In the middle of the woods, actually. But before I get ahead of myself, I should rewind a bit.
Let’s start with some background. I’ve lived on the Isle Of Saint Bernard (I know, total snoozefest of a name, but it’s an old place) my entire life. My family came here during a mining boom and has been rooted deep in the community ever since. My dad, a marine biologist and armature arborist, met my mom at a town hall meeting, where she, for some inexplicable reason, decided to ask him on a date.
My mom’s never been a person-person. She’s… Detail oriented. Driven. For her, everything has to have a purpose, and things that don’t aren’t important. Love, apparently, didn’t have much of a purpose, because she threw that out the window as soon as I was born. My dad was her antithesis- He didn’t care about the reason things were there, he just appreciated that they were.
Look, I know it looks like I have a big pile of unexpressed hatred and spite for my mom, but I don’t, promise. Its just that, well, it sucks, not having her around. She hasn’t visited, called or texted, and its been a month since she left.
My motives for digging into my dad’s death might be a bit more- Well, based on current circumstance that I’d like to admit. The only family I know I have is halfway across the world from me, and she left without much of any explanation as to what she’s doing. I want to know about the other half, sue me. And if she doesn’t like me digging into it, well, she can kiss my ass.
No mommy issues. Absolutely none.