It has been an interesting writing and living day here in
Bakersfield.
How has it been in the place you call your home, even if you
are traveling and this is just “home for a day?”
I did some writing that turned into quite a huge barrel of
a-ha flakes poured over my head.
Naturally I think I did some tune-up by writing my pantoum
the day before so images from my early childhood were ripe for the plucking,
but a high school football game memory is the one that reached out and grabbed
my heart in the most soulful way possible.
Here is what I wrote:
“In Fall 1979 I was a senior at Dana Hills High School in
Dana Point, California. I have no idea who we were playing because I didn’t
care about our lousy football team which rarely won a game. I went to the games
to socialize. On this night, I was flirting with a boy with curly blonde hair.
I think he was a friend of a friend. I was due to graduate early, I was working
at a job I loved, I was finally feeling comfortable in my skin.
For some reason the blonde haired boy whose name is lost in
memory found something ridiculously funny and we sat on the bleachers and
laughed and laughed and laughed and it was, all of a sudden, like we were in an
invisible bubble and no one else was there.
You might think this moment would end with the cliché high
school kiss or something, but it didn’t.
Instead it just ended with laughter and the bubble going
away but me, feeling almost overwhelmingly content in that moment. There were
no expectations, no explanations, no possible heartbreak, no reason to be afraid,
no awareness of what was to become of my life. I was no one’s sister, no one’s
mother, no one’s best friend, no one’s babysitter, no one’s student… for that
bubble moment I was just me and that blonde boy laughing.
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