Tag: #memory

Summer Solstice

Summer Solstice

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 2 Comments

“It smells like summer,” she said. Taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, as they drove along the foggy road.

“Hmm?” He glanced at her not turning from the road ahead, knowing it was at times like these that deer liked to dart into the road.

“It smells like summer.” She repeated, breathing in deeply again as if trying to pick out the notes of what exactly summer smelled like. “You know, it’s the scent of that chill that only happens late at night or early in the morning on a summer’s day before the sun has a chance to heat things up. When everything is still covered in dew and the air is moist. It smells like wearing shorts with a hoodie and trying to find dry firewood to make a bonfire. It smells like memory making and like bittersweet nostalgia. It smells like not wanting the nights to end. It smells like summer.” She sighed and leaned against the window.

He smiled at her and reached for her hand. She squeezed it tight and scooted across the bench seat leaning against him.

“That’s a very specific scent.” He told her and leaned down to give her a quick, soft kiss on her forehead.

“It is.” She agreed.

And they drove in silence the rest of the way to the carnival, lost in the thoughts of summer.

NPM 17

NPM 17

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 4 Comments

My body remembers the movement to old music.

Dancing by the big window on the third floor at lunch.

I loaned you one of my skirts.

Turns and turns.

I taught you steps.

It feels so long ago those Friday evenings when it was just you and me.

Or those nighttime walks with the pups that turned into dance sessions and impromptu choreography.

I hear old songs and I’m taken back to rehearsals with the girls.

Five, six, seven, eight.

Not a one, two, three, four.

It’s a kick, ball-change, followed by a turn clap clap.

We made notes on the paper table cloth as we ate crepes and drank coffee.

A group will enter here, she’ll have a solo there, everyone will come together in the chorus.

Do you remember the one where we jumped off the stage?

Or how about the one where we moved like skeletons?

I loved the one where I made you tutus and I can’t forget the one where I made you wings.

Sometimes I remember the one where we all cried. Oh, there were a few of those.

And sometimes the songs and movements just blend into a dance that has spanned decades.

It never ends, just goes on and on, song after song.

Sunday School

Sunday School

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 6 Comments

In its former life, my church was an auto body shop.

It’s a huge warehouse of a building right in the heart of Humboldt Park. We’re right in front of the eastern metal Puerto Rican flag that spans across Division street.

There’s a large freight elevator inside the building that used to take cars from the first floor to the second but for the past 40 or so years has carried the congregants that we’re either too old or too young to go up and down the stairs easily.

Every service someone is stationed at the elevator to ferry to people up into the sanctuary.

For a large part of my teenage years and early 20s an older man named, Juan, manned the elevator. He was a kind man who always had a smile and a candy for you.

Usually they were Werther’s hard candies, or sometimes the ones with a chewy center.

At some point he started to forget. Where he was. Where he lived. Who people were.

He stopped coming to church. It was just him and his wife, and it was too hard for her to care for him.

My sister handed me a werther’s on Sunday and I immediately thought of him. And I remembered his small act of kindness that he offered everyone he came across; words of encouragement, a smile, and a small candy.

And I hope he at least remembered he was loved.

Keep. In. Touch.

Keep. In. Touch.

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 3 Comments

I remember his mom calling my house looking for him.

We still had a landline at the time. It’s been a long time since we’ve had one of those.

I wonder if she just went through his autograph book.

“Good luck! Have a great summer. K.I.T. love, Kastle.”

What was his name?

“Bushy” is all that comes to mind. That wasn’t his name obviously. But Mrs. Martinez gave us all nicknames. Bushy had really thick eyebrows.

Poor kid.

I think she gave him a complex. At some point during our eighth grade year he got them waxed for the first time. He came in the next day with really sharp eyebrows and really red skin.

I got the name “Kastle,” with a K though, to  differentiate me from the other Castle in Mrs… (What was her name again? Something with a K I believe now that I think about it. I hadn’t thought of these people in 15 years) K’s class.

I’ve been Kastle for nearly 16 years no one ever questions it.

I remember a few other nicknames, “Barbie,” “Spikey,” “Elfie,” “Peanut Butter Girl,” it seems odd to grown up me that an adult would give some mildly offensive nicknames based off of physical traits to her young teenage students and get away with it.

But Bushy’s mom called me one summer night not long after we graduated. I think his name was Ricardo. Somewhere in the back of my mind that name stands out.

She called the house, my sister was the one who answered the phone. She’d asked for me. My sister handed me the phone.

She told me she was Ricardo’s mom and that he hadn’t come home and if I’d heard from him or seen him.

We were never that close, but I’d told him to KIT!

I told her I hadn’t but that I’d call around.

A few days later he called me. Told me he was home. That he was fine. A misunderstanding.

We were 14.

“KIT! have a good summer! Good luck in high school! I hope you don’t run away from your mom’s house!”

I don’t think I spoke to him again after that.

But for some reason driving down Laramie, I thought of that boy and wondered what ever happened to him.