Perched on top of that beautiful building,
William Penn is presiding over the City and the view must be fabulous.
She loses many games of chess at
the Philadelphia Open. I fall to pieces like a broken wine glass. I was not expecting all the losses. She meets
us at the bar after I had 2 premature celebratory drinks when I believed I had
it all under control, and that a game is a game. I was certain she would win
and if not, one can always play another round and have another chance.
Tournaments confine the boundaries of this free thinking approach and stifle
the parent of the player by placing fiercely false expectations on a child who
really just likes to play a game. Something impossibly difficult for this
parent to believe, not because I don’t enjoy games, I do. I just do not
understand the stakes at this level of competition without it collapsing into
one-dimensional space. It is all about winning and losing and her rating
rapidly dropping way below sea level. Gravity, air, life, joy are all sucked
out of any fun with much more pressure than one of those pumps that pull air
out of wine bottles when only half is drunk and the wine is decent so it’s
worth preserving for another day. No,
the vacuum pressure pulls all the life force out of the experience until it is
turned inside out. Multiple times, so it has no ability to be recognized after
2 seconds. Imagine all the pink and bloody innards turned outside and that is
what one sees. Heart beating, stomach churning, brain pulsating. All of it
whipped inside out. Wow.
Then there is this desire to throw
up. Throwing up would be a really great stress reliever and distraction. No such luck.
Remember, all of this is for
nothing significant at all. It is anxiety just for the sake of anxiety. To feel
something, rather than nothing. To make a mountain out of a mole hill. It is
like watching a train wreck except I am the train and I am wrecking. And there
was no accident.
NOTHING.
No one died.
So, me and my 2 drinks decide to
leave. I take a walk in the opposite direction, west. It is dark. Walnut Street,
or Chestnut. I love Philadelphia. I start to wonder, as I text furiously that I
will not go crazy and find them again, if that is true. I suddenly realize that
Philadelphia holds some serious Olde Baggage for me. Is it any coincidence that
I am irrationally melting down in the City of Brotherly Love? I will not make
excuses, I will tell the truth. It has to do with mourning. Love that existed
and vanished. I am 12 years into my marriage and just STARTING to realize what
love really is. To be linked to Ye Olde Love in Philadelphia with the
Declaration of Independence, Liberty Bell, Founding Fathers, Carpenter’s Hall, grand
old brick buildings and majestic architecture where we traipsed through
cemeteries in the magic first falling snow and curled under covers and waited
to fall asleep never to awaken from this dream. The dream that holds us
together though the years, the distance and the fantasy of something which supposedly
existed so many years ago. It all holds court in that shattered moment of
losing the Game. Something that felt so idealized and alive was never there. A
myth, fantasy, dream. Empty and pathetically leading me by the nose for years. Some bizarre oedipal recreation tripping over
me.
Such a wonderful memory? Not
really. In this moment, not at all.
Right then and there, I walked
under the Moonstone Daycare Center sign, swaying above me in the wind. I worked
there with Sandy and the kids: Me, Monica, and all those kids who are in their
late 30’s by now: Marcel, Elizabeth, Amanda, Austin. They are all grown up and
here I am, just a little child dreaming a childish romantic nightmare in which
I am having the delusion of slowly and painfully waking up from.
I walk east and find them. The
cobblestones and landmarks which traced our Olde connection surround me. Gobble
me up and grip me like a vice.
They are waiting for me at the
restaurant. I order another drink and pout. My child says, “I Love you, Mommy”
in that way which means I am pathetic and I am gushing guilt all over the table
and floor like a bludgeoned bloody irresponsible Jewish Mother. The one I swore
I’d never turn into, but here I am, buying dinner, drinks, flowers and saying
“I’m Sorry” one million times. It makes no difference now. We have to wait it
out and assess the damage later because She is not Me. SHE is She. Thank goodness.
And I am not her.
Really.
After dinner I turn it around and I
drag her all the way to South Street. We walk and walk and walk. Garland of
Letters has not moved an inch in a thousand years. We play with the multiple
wind chimes and they are still magical. The incense and patchouli are still
there. The new age music is still playing. The Goddess statues and dozens and
dozens of crystals and stones are still there. It is all still there, but that
Corner Bookstore is not -with the rickety metal shelves and torn gray carpet.
Sitting on the floor between the stacks looking at giant art books. There is a
new tattoo/piercing place and I pretend to drag her upstairs so we can get
matching mother and daughter tattoos. A group of teens standing outside laugh
at silly me.
I am putting on a little show.
She likes this silly me and insists
on interlocking arms. We head East.
Retracing the Olde path through
Society Hill and there is the large bronze Bird with hovering wings slumped
over itself. So funny, and still there, across from a bronze woman and man.
Balancing out their loneliness with weighted wings and a floppy beak. Like an awkward
metal muppet character too heavy to lift off.
Standing on the one- step- up brick stage. They can be touched and held
and rubbed.
We walk on and gaze at the lights
of the Ben Franklin Bridge and the winding sidewalk near the Ritz Movie Theater
where Olde and I saw ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ and ‘Stranger Than Paradise’. Ha!
We held twisted hands in twisted
dreamland.
The New Wave restaurant where I
went out on a date with some cute other guy, when Olde and I broke up. I had my
first beer, which stunk. I was cool like
the cool décor resembling the set of Pee Wee’s Playhouse in the cobblestoned
square. Now a Seafood Den, or something.
My kid sits on the wall to rest her
feet. They dangle like a game. This wall Olde and I sat on and ate up the same
sky with some strange young hungry love. Then we kept walking and I realized
that this was never ever really going to leave: this abstract memory of
something better, more, passionate and crazy. Where is Olde now? I don’t even
care because he no longer exists.
He is dead.
Then Ye Olde Child inside of me
shattered into pieces , once again, when I looked at her smile. That child me
and Olde and that Time… and then for moment, a second, a lie, we turn the
corner and head West with our shadows ahead of us and the Olde street lamps
shining from behind.
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