When The Matai Has Fallen
There is one thing I am beginning to learn in life about
growing up too fast. It is the practice of heartbreak, there is no
heartbreaking moment in my life that can surpass the heartbreak that I have
when it comes to the love of my family. In that case, it has meant all my life
I’ve had heartbreak practice. It also means that when you are driving down the
880 with your father in the passenger side crying there are two things
happening, imagination and trauma.
Imagining that the wind blowing against the window pane kind
of sounds like how the ocean will crash as you drive faster to ignore his cry
so you don’t cry . It means this is the moment that you will think of your
relationship with French bread.
The moment your
passenger once ran out of the childhood house frantically and you followed him
in the car to drive away. Driving to Safeway to buy a loaf of French bread.
Only returning back home with the bread in your lap as your father pulls out
his wallet to give you all of his money. 14 dollars. Two five dollar bills and
four one dollar bills. Nobody is suppose to remember shit like this. Nobody
gives their money away at this time. This time when your father will step out
of the car to his fate, the wonder you had on arriving home to the complex
where all the neighbors stood in a crowd standing near your beaten mother outside
next to the 2 cop cars that awaited your fathers arrest for domestic violence.
So it is this night’s silence I’ll remember as I remember as
a child. That as we grow and things change or don’t change the things that have
passed on without knowing whether it be through my father or mother happen in
the most subtle ways. Then men in my family have a way of beating each other
drunkenly like they will be able to skip their tears through drunk laughter.
An important, very simple thing someone told me when I was
locked up was; you can not get to 10 without getting through all the numbers.
Because if you think you are at 8 because you bypassed 6 or 7….you will have to
take your ass back to complete them to really be at 10.
Sometimes I feel at 10……then I realize I’ve skipped a lot and
return back to imagination and French bread.
