061713 -- I Remember Everything
Jun. 17th, 2013 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memorialrainbowFive and a half hours is a long time to be stuck in LaGuardia.
I move from C23 to C24 and finally to C28. It’s down around the corner, the only way to access it a long ramp. There are four gates here, a small vending area, and two telltale signs that this room was built before 9/11: there are very few outlets (as not nearly as many people had cell phones back then) and the huge window in front of us overlooks the runway. ‘Back in the day,’ visitors could come to this room and watch planes take off and land, I’m sure. Not possible now, but it’s a nice way to spend the delay until the rain starts and nobody’s doing anything.
We get free food while the plane is diverted to Scranton, and cheer when the plane finally lands. I am kept awake on the plane by the person in front of me, who insists on reading a book at one in the morning (and is notably the only person in the plane with the light on). We leave the clouds of the city and Pennsylvania behind, and the city I once called home spreads out like a map of power and light on the ground as we make our descent.
--
We moved to Connor Knoll in 1993. I was five. Stephanie had been born while we were in the apartment complex.
We built that house. My early days are full of memories of going to carpet stores and Lowe’s and home improvement this, rebuilding that, furniture and painting and wallpaper. Even as a little kid, I remember the smallest of details, how I would take paint samples from the walls and how I picked out the wallpaper for my own room. When Luke was born, I moved into the spare bedroom across the hall.
We all considered that our house. The backyard overlooked several others, so my mom wouldn’t have to worry about us as long as we were in range. We had Christmases in the family room and I wrote songs in the living room and dubbed them over on karaoke tapes. I wrote scripts and made websites on the computer upstairs when we finally got DSL, and Stephanie first picked up a basketball with my father during an event at the local town hall.
The schools accepted me for the most part, and I had anticipated I would graduate from there. In April 2000, we learned we were leaving. On July 21, 2000, we did.
--
Sarah’s waiting for me just past security in the brand new terminal (built in 2008, with a specially designed security area). It’s past two in the morning.
Her father drives us both back to her house, in the neighborhood I used to live in. I tell them about New York City, how it’s hard sometimes to be there, how stressful it is. He says not to be a stranger. After last year, I’m not sure what that means, to lean on someone else. I’ve been taught I must do it all by myself.
They are all up again in two hours to go to Kentucky for the religious ceremony. I blissfully sleep in, borrow a car, go to Arby’s on 116th Street. Apparently nobody goes shopping where I used to anymore.
But I was a perceptive little kid. I remember when 96th Street was a newer area and the Meijer and United Artists theater had just been built. I remember when the second half of our neighborhood didn’t even go that far. I remember when the pool was built, when my school was brand new, when there was only one high school in the area. I remember the Fry’s building that for six months was called Incredible Universe and had every electronic device known to man in the 90’s. When I mention this to her father, he searches back in one of the Longaberger-esque baskets in the kitchen and finds a keychain from the opening. He gives it to me, saying I can keep it.
I remember everything.
--
In sixth grade, I was not in the same class as the rest of my friends.
To this day, I can’t single out a specific source for all of the damage, and I’m not sure I want to go into every specific detail. But I do know that while most of the other students caught on to what was hot and mode and popular, I remained myself -- separate from the others. And I did find friends. But the tapes in my head were running, recording the voices that would play back again and again for the next thirteen years, voices that still play back.
I sat down dumbfounded on the bus that day, when the other kids cheered as they heard I was moving. But speechlessness turned to anger, and I wanted revenge. Not the Columbine kind, but the kind that comes from being better than they ever anticipated me to be. My parents held me to ridiculous standards, but I held myself to those same ones.
If I didn’t become as famous as I should be, because of my talent, then they would never be sorry, and I would never heal.
--
I played in this gym as a kid, on and off; I vaguely remember tossing the ball up into the hoop to watch it fall back down. Today, the gym is decorated for the reception the next day. We all eat pizza and I marvel at how Sarah’s brothers have grown. Dinner is a simple affair, held in one of the back rooms.
After dinner I take my phone and go for a walk around the neighborhood I had grown up in. I had wanted to take a bike, but apparently they are all out of air and trapped in the mess called the garage. I consider taking the car, but that’s a bit obstructive to taking pictures.
It sounds like summer in Fishers: lots and lots of lawn mowers. I hit the sidewalk New York style, walking fast, still in my nice dress from the rehearsal. I go to the park, consider swinging, just take pictures instead. I’m nervous as I approach my house, thinking that somebody is going to come out of a house somewhere, ask me what I’m doing here, demand ID, and when they find out I don’t live here anymore, they’ll escort me back to Sarah’s house and make me stay there.
But nobody ever does.
The trees in the front yard are gone -- they were probably blocking the house too much. Poured in the concrete is the date: 9-9-93. The fire hydrant out front, the deck my dad, uncle, and grandpa built, the birdhouse we couldn’t take with us.
I remember everything.
I take a shortcut across the field, walk past my elementary school. I’m still concerned someone will jump out of the school and apprehend me. But nobody ever does.
--
The couple is announced after the ring ceremony the next day. While they take pictures outside, one of the bridesmaids suggests the bride may have fallen into the pond and the bride’s mother spazzes out. It’s the first time in nineteen years I’ve ever heard her curse.
I line up with the rest of the bridal party, and as they mistakenly call my name before the mother of the groom, I wonder how many people are going to point me out when I come down and laugh, tell me I don’t belong here, put me on a bus back to Ohio.
But nobody ever does.
It’s then that I realize that nobody remembers who I am because they’re all new, as well. And those who would remember who I am have moved on, graduated from high school, married, had kids, don’t care anymore. They have their own lives to attend to. Nobody’s busy writing “Emily Imes is a loser and should go die” on the water tower in Carmel in John Deere green. And just like them, I have moved on as well. I still don’t like Ohio any more than I did in 2000 -- save for that place up north, and the school I eventually went to -- but I am where I belong, with whom I belong with.
But I still remember everything.
Since I don’t know anybody, I dance alone. I sing all the words to Gangnam Style and do the Cotton Eye’d Joe dance Sarah and I learned in elementary school. She’d be doing it with me if she wasn’t so visibly uncomfortable in her dress.
The last dance comes up, and it’s a couples’ dance. Everybody pairs up, and the DJ says for everybody to find their own partner. I look around the floor as the song starts, but the family members I’ve met have all found people to dance with. Across the floor, I see Sarah with her dad, motioning to me.
I really did honestly think this was a couples’ dance, but I join them anyway. We dance in a tight knit hug, and in a town that has long forgotten I even existed, I am remembered by the people who matter.
--
I don’t get much of a chance to say goodbye to Sarah; she leaves for the hotel before I really get a chance to. In a week or two, she’ll be in Canada. Amtrak tickets are a hundred and a quarter American dollars, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to go, but I want to. Maybe next year; I have a park I want to hit up.
I fit right in with the family, despite the fact that I look nothing like them. We crash the hotel where the rest of the family is staying, go to Qdoba (and get yelled at), take the remainder of the food to the shelter, stay up late watching movies, get up early to drive to the airport. The new terminal is beautiful, and thankfully (unlike LaGuardia) I don’t have to stay there long.
The plane is the smallest one I’ve ever been in; we taxi easily out to the empty runway. Far off in the distance are the skyscrapers of Indianapolis, a city I once called home, a land that I always concerned scorned me before. I used to tell the story of how they wanted me to leave, how I left for Ohio with my tail in between my legs and believed I belonged there, as if it was some sort of punishment for existing. But places cannot be categorized by worthiness. Places are just places. It is the memories -- the frame of a house, the shopping mall on 82nd Street, the bus rides to school; three weeks in my grandparents’ basement, getting my heart broken in the cafeteria, the midway on a warm August night; the first six train to work, the Metropolitan Opera chandelier, Pier 94 on a snowy morning -- it is the memories that make the place what it is.
When I finally get married, when I journey with my future fiance to the altar, I want it to be in a place that I love, a place that is easily accessible, even if by plane. The place may change, the people may come and go, but the memory itself lasts as long as I do.
As we accelerate down the runway, I get the sensation that ten year old Emily is sitting in the empty seat next to me. She’s watching out the window, going “Wow!” as the scenery flies past. She’s headed to Orlando, to Disney World, and I am headed home to JFK, but we are both flying, uninhibited by the past and the words and what else may hold us down. We are free.
She looks at me, and I remember everything.
I move from C23 to C24 and finally to C28. It’s down around the corner, the only way to access it a long ramp. There are four gates here, a small vending area, and two telltale signs that this room was built before 9/11: there are very few outlets (as not nearly as many people had cell phones back then) and the huge window in front of us overlooks the runway. ‘Back in the day,’ visitors could come to this room and watch planes take off and land, I’m sure. Not possible now, but it’s a nice way to spend the delay until the rain starts and nobody’s doing anything.
We get free food while the plane is diverted to Scranton, and cheer when the plane finally lands. I am kept awake on the plane by the person in front of me, who insists on reading a book at one in the morning (and is notably the only person in the plane with the light on). We leave the clouds of the city and Pennsylvania behind, and the city I once called home spreads out like a map of power and light on the ground as we make our descent.
--
We moved to Connor Knoll in 1993. I was five. Stephanie had been born while we were in the apartment complex.
We built that house. My early days are full of memories of going to carpet stores and Lowe’s and home improvement this, rebuilding that, furniture and painting and wallpaper. Even as a little kid, I remember the smallest of details, how I would take paint samples from the walls and how I picked out the wallpaper for my own room. When Luke was born, I moved into the spare bedroom across the hall.
We all considered that our house. The backyard overlooked several others, so my mom wouldn’t have to worry about us as long as we were in range. We had Christmases in the family room and I wrote songs in the living room and dubbed them over on karaoke tapes. I wrote scripts and made websites on the computer upstairs when we finally got DSL, and Stephanie first picked up a basketball with my father during an event at the local town hall.
The schools accepted me for the most part, and I had anticipated I would graduate from there. In April 2000, we learned we were leaving. On July 21, 2000, we did.
--
Sarah’s waiting for me just past security in the brand new terminal (built in 2008, with a specially designed security area). It’s past two in the morning.
Her father drives us both back to her house, in the neighborhood I used to live in. I tell them about New York City, how it’s hard sometimes to be there, how stressful it is. He says not to be a stranger. After last year, I’m not sure what that means, to lean on someone else. I’ve been taught I must do it all by myself.
They are all up again in two hours to go to Kentucky for the religious ceremony. I blissfully sleep in, borrow a car, go to Arby’s on 116th Street. Apparently nobody goes shopping where I used to anymore.
But I was a perceptive little kid. I remember when 96th Street was a newer area and the Meijer and United Artists theater had just been built. I remember when the second half of our neighborhood didn’t even go that far. I remember when the pool was built, when my school was brand new, when there was only one high school in the area. I remember the Fry’s building that for six months was called Incredible Universe and had every electronic device known to man in the 90’s. When I mention this to her father, he searches back in one of the Longaberger-esque baskets in the kitchen and finds a keychain from the opening. He gives it to me, saying I can keep it.
I remember everything.
--
In sixth grade, I was not in the same class as the rest of my friends.
To this day, I can’t single out a specific source for all of the damage, and I’m not sure I want to go into every specific detail. But I do know that while most of the other students caught on to what was hot and mode and popular, I remained myself -- separate from the others. And I did find friends. But the tapes in my head were running, recording the voices that would play back again and again for the next thirteen years, voices that still play back.
I sat down dumbfounded on the bus that day, when the other kids cheered as they heard I was moving. But speechlessness turned to anger, and I wanted revenge. Not the Columbine kind, but the kind that comes from being better than they ever anticipated me to be. My parents held me to ridiculous standards, but I held myself to those same ones.
If I didn’t become as famous as I should be, because of my talent, then they would never be sorry, and I would never heal.
--
I played in this gym as a kid, on and off; I vaguely remember tossing the ball up into the hoop to watch it fall back down. Today, the gym is decorated for the reception the next day. We all eat pizza and I marvel at how Sarah’s brothers have grown. Dinner is a simple affair, held in one of the back rooms.
After dinner I take my phone and go for a walk around the neighborhood I had grown up in. I had wanted to take a bike, but apparently they are all out of air and trapped in the mess called the garage. I consider taking the car, but that’s a bit obstructive to taking pictures.
It sounds like summer in Fishers: lots and lots of lawn mowers. I hit the sidewalk New York style, walking fast, still in my nice dress from the rehearsal. I go to the park, consider swinging, just take pictures instead. I’m nervous as I approach my house, thinking that somebody is going to come out of a house somewhere, ask me what I’m doing here, demand ID, and when they find out I don’t live here anymore, they’ll escort me back to Sarah’s house and make me stay there.
But nobody ever does.
The trees in the front yard are gone -- they were probably blocking the house too much. Poured in the concrete is the date: 9-9-93. The fire hydrant out front, the deck my dad, uncle, and grandpa built, the birdhouse we couldn’t take with us.
I remember everything.
I take a shortcut across the field, walk past my elementary school. I’m still concerned someone will jump out of the school and apprehend me. But nobody ever does.
--
The couple is announced after the ring ceremony the next day. While they take pictures outside, one of the bridesmaids suggests the bride may have fallen into the pond and the bride’s mother spazzes out. It’s the first time in nineteen years I’ve ever heard her curse.
I line up with the rest of the bridal party, and as they mistakenly call my name before the mother of the groom, I wonder how many people are going to point me out when I come down and laugh, tell me I don’t belong here, put me on a bus back to Ohio.
But nobody ever does.
It’s then that I realize that nobody remembers who I am because they’re all new, as well. And those who would remember who I am have moved on, graduated from high school, married, had kids, don’t care anymore. They have their own lives to attend to. Nobody’s busy writing “Emily Imes is a loser and should go die” on the water tower in Carmel in John Deere green. And just like them, I have moved on as well. I still don’t like Ohio any more than I did in 2000 -- save for that place up north, and the school I eventually went to -- but I am where I belong, with whom I belong with.
But I still remember everything.
Since I don’t know anybody, I dance alone. I sing all the words to Gangnam Style and do the Cotton Eye’d Joe dance Sarah and I learned in elementary school. She’d be doing it with me if she wasn’t so visibly uncomfortable in her dress.
The last dance comes up, and it’s a couples’ dance. Everybody pairs up, and the DJ says for everybody to find their own partner. I look around the floor as the song starts, but the family members I’ve met have all found people to dance with. Across the floor, I see Sarah with her dad, motioning to me.
I really did honestly think this was a couples’ dance, but I join them anyway. We dance in a tight knit hug, and in a town that has long forgotten I even existed, I am remembered by the people who matter.
--
I don’t get much of a chance to say goodbye to Sarah; she leaves for the hotel before I really get a chance to. In a week or two, she’ll be in Canada. Amtrak tickets are a hundred and a quarter American dollars, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to go, but I want to. Maybe next year; I have a park I want to hit up.
I fit right in with the family, despite the fact that I look nothing like them. We crash the hotel where the rest of the family is staying, go to Qdoba (and get yelled at), take the remainder of the food to the shelter, stay up late watching movies, get up early to drive to the airport. The new terminal is beautiful, and thankfully (unlike LaGuardia) I don’t have to stay there long.
The plane is the smallest one I’ve ever been in; we taxi easily out to the empty runway. Far off in the distance are the skyscrapers of Indianapolis, a city I once called home, a land that I always concerned scorned me before. I used to tell the story of how they wanted me to leave, how I left for Ohio with my tail in between my legs and believed I belonged there, as if it was some sort of punishment for existing. But places cannot be categorized by worthiness. Places are just places. It is the memories -- the frame of a house, the shopping mall on 82nd Street, the bus rides to school; three weeks in my grandparents’ basement, getting my heart broken in the cafeteria, the midway on a warm August night; the first six train to work, the Metropolitan Opera chandelier, Pier 94 on a snowy morning -- it is the memories that make the place what it is.
When I finally get married, when I journey with my future fiance to the altar, I want it to be in a place that I love, a place that is easily accessible, even if by plane. The place may change, the people may come and go, but the memory itself lasts as long as I do.
As we accelerate down the runway, I get the sensation that ten year old Emily is sitting in the empty seat next to me. She’s watching out the window, going “Wow!” as the scenery flies past. She’s headed to Orlando, to Disney World, and I am headed home to JFK, but we are both flying, uninhibited by the past and the words and what else may hold us down. We are free.
She looks at me, and I remember everything.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-18 07:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-19 02:06 am (UTC)I was bawling when I wrote the end of this. At work. While a meeting was being held right behind me. Pretty great. :S
* Coincidentally, for future note, I just remembered that 10-year old Emily flew Delta both times she flew out of Indy. Steph and I got to see the pilot's cabin (this was before 9/11) and both got little Delta wing pins. The things you remember. I need to fly more often.