Battle Scars

I am divorcing and my children are with me half of the time (seven out of fourteen days, to be exact). Remaining a parent, under these conditions, makes our telephone conversations like the fruit that gets pressed on the spike to make juice. If I squeeze it hard enough, I will get the sweetest, largest drink. With every question, every detail, I squeeze and twist harder.

So, hearing their stories gives me this tell-able past. It's a past that I cannot have but can at least hear told, so I cling to their stories. I spoke with my children tonight on the telephone, and it reminded me of how each one of them has become a story in his or her own right.

My oldest son told me: "Dad, I got a battle scar today," and launched into the story of his topple-over on a bicycle and resulting elbow scrape. In order to explain the cause of his fall, he had to engage physics by describing an unusually high elevation between the asphalt on the street and the concrete of the curb. "You know that little lip," he said, "between the road and the curb? Well, on this particular road, the lip was higher than normal. Like, when you are riding toward it, you need to hit it straight on, and not at an angle. My tire slipped over it and kicked the wheel out from under me. I scraped up my elbow pretty badly, but guess what? I did not cry at all." To which I added, strangely nostalgic for his less macho-self, "you know what? Sometimes it's ok to cry, I mean, if it hurts really badly."

He was so strong in his description, a physical, concrete presentation of events. I got the picture that he just wanted to sketch it out: the difference between the two patches of road, the angle of the tire, the torque of the wheel. It was a narrative of physical detail that left emotion in the dust. It was a narrative of growing up. He is a great storyteller, my son. I want to hold him close to me and remind him of the reason that we tell stories to each other -- to explain things that are confusing, or troubling, or terrifying, or beautiful. To assemble and order them. To distance ourselves from the actual past and strengthen our present selves with a tell-able, ordered past.

By Pete Rorabaugh
Narratives of single-parenting, academia, and indie-music
allistelling.blogspot.com