Subject:  Chapter 1 |
Author:
Cynaera
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Date Posted: 16:19:28 12/20/01 Thu
In reply to:
Cynaera
's message, "P.J." on 16:13:05 12/20/01 Thu
“P.J.”
Chapter One
“My name is P.J. Maybe later, I’ll tell you what those initials stand for. Right now, though, I only have a little time left and I’m supposed to tell you everything I know about life. Someone close to me once said it isn’t how long you live that matters, but how well. I guess this telling is part of the 'wellness' of my life.
"I’m thirteen years old. Born in Twin Falls, Idaho on October 12, 1987. It was the first time my mother could remember ever having seen two feet of snow in October. Maybe it was some kind of sign of what she could expect for our lives from that day on. Dad was gone a lot – he worked on a construction crew for a company that built microwave towers and strung waveguide, and business was good. Mom used to tell me I was a miracle baby and up until a few months ago, I never knew what she’d meant. I’d thought she was referring to some kind of genetic malfunction I’d survived, but then I learned that she’d been talking about the absence of Dad for most of my life – my conception had been a kind of 'hit-or-miss' affair, and one time, it hit.
"It’s March as I tell this, and Dad hasn’t been home since last year November. He calls once in awhile from whatever remote town he has a few days in, but I can see it’s taking its toll on Mom. She appears older than I’ve ever seen her and sometimes when she turns those sad eyes to me I see my own reflection on her face, and it scares me. We look so much alike, right down to the oldness of our gazes. We both have mood-ring eyes – they change colors in harmony with our emotional status at any given moment. Most of the time lately, our eyes are indigo – the mood hasn’t been good. I can tell that Mom is suffering and she misses Dad, but her pain goes deeper than that, even though she thinks she’s hiding it from me.
"She doesn’t know that I know I’m dying. I’ve known for a couple of months - since the time I had to leave school and was taken to the emergency room because of a bloody nose that wouldn’t stop. The attending physician did everything short of transfusing me – he finally ended up laser-cauterizing both nostrils, which hurt like nothing I’d ever felt before. The school nurse authorized the treatment with prior permission from Mom, who had been gone and couldn’t be reached, even in this day of cell-phones, pagers and surveillance. Mom had known before I did that I’d most probably need some sort of medical care in my duration, and she’d discreetly arranged for it with the school, in case something like that bloody nose happened when she wasn’t around.
"I remember the nurse took me home. I had a wad of cotton stuffed up inside each nostril, a tube of antibiotics I was under orders to use four times a day, and a small bottle of pain pills I was told to use very sparingly, as they were highly addictive. After she’d gone, I flushed the pain pills, ripped out the cotton balls and dabbed a touch of the Vaseline-like antibiotic up my nose. Then I went to my room, turned on my stereo and fell asleep to the sounds of 'Sweet Child of Mine' by Guns ‘N Roses…
"Two days later, I intercepted a cryptic communiqué from the hospital where I’d been taken. It was addressed to Mom, but I was good at steaming open her mail, reading it and sealing it before she ever saw it – I know all sorts of things about her that she’d never suspect I know. anyway, the letter said something about my 'condition' and how it was rapidly deteriorating. It said the doctors were being pragmatic when they estimated I had about a year left.
"I didn’t fall apart then – I sealed the letter and stuffed it in with all the other mail, then went to my room. It took awhile for the reaction to sink in. When it did, I felt like I needed to do everything I could to live my life to the fullest; I wanted to learn to fly, to skydive, to ski, to hack into the Pentagon’s computer. I found all kinds of crazy things I’d never done but wanted to try, like bungee-jumping, riding every rollercoaster in the United States and Canada, kissing the girl I’d always thought was beautiful but could never get the courage to approach – these things went through my brain so fast I almost couldn’t register them.
"So I spent a long time writing all of them down. Then, I put them in order of importance. After that, I rearranged them in order of urgency, with my time frame in mind. By the time I had the list finished, Mom was home, carrying two bags of groceries and calling my name, asking me to help, even though she didn’t know I was already halfway to the car.
"Dinner was my favorite – pork chops, wild rice and steamed vegetables, with pumpkin pie for dessert, something we rarely ever had. I suspected she was spoiling me because she knew she’d only have me for a short time. It hurt me to know she was putting on a good face for me, when I really needed for her to be real with me.
"About a week ago, during another favorite dinner (which by this time I seemed to be getting every night) I finally told her that, and after she finished crying she hugged me, and dinner went cold while we sat in front of the fire, talking about everything and nothing. She played her favorite music for me – Nat King Cole singing, 'Unforgettable', Billie Holliday singing 'Good Morning Heartache,' a whole set of songs I can’t remember now. It was warm and special to me, seeing her let go of her pain for awhile and just be my mother. She told me stories about Dad, about how she and he met and fell in love, about traveling with him on the road when they first were married, about the time she climbed a four-hundred foot tower when one of Dad’s crew members was incapacitated, and helped him get it built under deadline.
"She made Dad more real to me, telling me all that. He’d always been like a shadow – there once in awhile, gone more often than not, and sometimes I couldn’t even remember what he looked like until Mom showed me pictures of him. I told her about the girl in my physics class who passed me notes telling me she thought I was cute – I remember Mom smiled at that and ruffled my hair, whispering, 'Well, she’s got good taste in men.'
"It was a good night, and she let me stay home from school the next day because we’d been up until sunrise. She’d let me drink beer while she had wine, and we played a board game, both of us cheating our eyes out. I felt like Rocky Dennis from the movie 'Mask,' wanting to do it all before I was gone.
"This new perception makes me see things more clearly. I don’t complain as much about stupid things like how tired I am, or how someone said something that made me angry. I don’t insult people anymore. I don’t like dirty jokes or cruelty, and I’m not afraid to tell anyone that. I figure I’ve only got a little time left to take care of all the necessary things. I have to help Mom plan for my death – I’ve already told her I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered from the sky. She laughed, even while she was crying, and hugged me for a full minute. 'You’re your father’s son,' she sniffed in my ear. 'Will you settle for the top of a five-hundred foot guyed tower?' and we both laughed like we’d lost our sanity.
"I haven’t told anyone else about me. I don’t even know if Dad knows – it’s been so long since I’ve seen him that I wonder if he’d even care. I guess he’d have to care, being my dad. But then again, I’ve seen parents who cared less for their kids than they did for some axe-murderer across the country, so maybe my skepticism is warranted.
"You’re probably wondering why a thirteen year-old kid is using what Mom calls 'Ten-dollar words.' I inherited my intelligence from my dad’s side of the family, Mom told me once. She said Dad’s dad was a college professor who taught physics, and his dad was an inventor. Mom didn’t give me specifics about her side of the tree, so I did some digging on my own and found out that her mother had dropped out of school to have her, then resumed her education while she was really young. Grandmother worked, studied, and was a good mother to my mom, teaching her basic values, sensible skills, and giving her a taste of simple joys in life. My mom may not have had book learning, but she was a genius in the living of life, and she passed that childlike wonder on to me. I think maybe I have the best of both sides of my family – my mother’s joy and curiosity, and my father’s sensibility and practical intelligence and foresight.
"That’s what made me decide to tell my story – the looking to the future. After I’m gone, I want someone to be able to hear my story and take something from it. Well, isn’t that what most people want from the future, anyway?”
~ ~ ~
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