esykah

The summer I turned 17, my family rented a townhouse in Cape Canaveral,
Florida. It was 1998, the year of wildfires all throughout Central
Florida. When the fires reached Brevard county, you could smell the wood
smoke wafting through the glass doors and into the living room. I slept
most days until mid afternoon, avoiding as much of the sun as I could. I
stayed up all night, eating popsicles and making paper snowflakes,
drinking cappucino, chain smoking. Talking to faceless people on the
internet. Listening to music. Falling in love for the first time. More
importantly, changing. I was shy and sad and uncomfortable with myself;
events of the summer and the swelling of the music turned that
around, maybe to a fault. The album I listened to most that summer was
Adore, the Smashing Pumpkins album fans and critics alike -didnt- adore.
I was oddly entranced by the dark, echoing sounds and flowy lyrics.
Every time I play the album now, I'm 17 again, and I still, to this
day, smell wood smoke when I close my eyes.





*





I watched the Challenger explode. Not on TV, but in the sky above me. I was four. My mother was twenty one. Mommy, whats that? I asked, as suddenly, bits of silver began to dance back down towards the ground. She didnt answer, just gasped and covered my eyes. Until she started to act so worried, Id thought it was pretty.





*





It scares me now to think of how old and wise I thought my mother was back then. Now, Im older than she was before I stopped seeing her as something heroic and legendary, and just saw her as mom. It was overnight, too, how she went from being someone who knew all the answers to someone who refused to give them up. I was impatient. I still am. I still tease my mom about the time I was six and she was twenty three, and I asked her what sex was, and she told me it was kissing. She was mortified to learn I thought Id lost my virginity and didnt dispel of that notion for three years, until I was nine. And then she said that someday, when I have my own kids, Id understand. I was 17 when we had that conversation. When youre 23, youll think differently. Did I? No. I never felt compelled to lie to kids. Children are my legends now, my heroes. Why fill their heads with nonsense?





*



Remember letting off balloons filled with helium in grade school? Attaching a tag with your name and schools address to them and waiting to see if anyone mails them back. When I let my first balloon go, it was while I was living at that same Apopka trailer I watched the Challenger explode from. My balloon made it all the way to Kentucky and back. The next time, I was in second grade. Pennsylvania. It only made it to Reading, and here I was convinced itd make it all the way to the moon. I was actually disappointed to find my balloon had been sent back in an envelope. With a note, even. If I ever find some little kids balloon, Im sending it back postmarked Mars.