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| Another picture from those years. It got a little weird sometimes. |
I’m pulled in a few different directions for tonight’s Ironic Advent MediCATION #7. Last night’s MediCATION was about dust, and confession, and ghosts, and that’s not an easy thing to write, and I doubt it’s an easy thing to read. Trouble is, I’m still sitting with it, or as Ben Camino would say, “chewing on roots.” So I think I’m gonna keep chewing, but I’m gonna come at it from a different angle.
I posted an old picture last night of 4 teenage boys. Jordan, me, Jon, and Ben. Let me tell you the story about those boys, that picture, and that room. (I’m going to use shorter paragraphs tonight. You’re welcome.)
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| Jordan, me, Jon, and Ben. |
I’ve known them for about as long as you can really claim to know anyone. Jordan, I met in t-ball. Jon and Ben, I met in 3rd grade at Bluffton Elementary, then called East Side. I say Jon and Ben like they’re one person because they’re brothers and until we graduated high school I’m not sure I ever spent much time with one and not the other. They’re a package deal. Ben is a bit older, but it never made a difference back then.
Jordan always reminded me of Tigger. He was hyper and bouncy and hilarious and sort of lived in his own world, but he also kinda looked like Tigger, too. The eyes and the chin. Jon was a little blonde boy, shorter than me until high school when he caught up. Very intelligent. He graduated from IU med school this year. Sort of looks like John Lennon. (You wouldn’t know it now, but for a brief time, maybe the second semester of 6th grade, I was one of the taller boys in my class). Ben was always bigger and taller than the rest of us. I’m not sure he ever got anything lower than an A in school, except for maybe a B in P.E. or English. He’s a computer programmer now and keeps me up to date on all the latest happenings on Reddit and 4Chan.
Jon and Ben were the best part about middle school at Bluffton. On Fridays, after that last bell, I’d hustle around the corner of the 5th grade hallway and run to the door to watch for my mom’s van. She’d pull in the parking lot and pick the three of us up and take us home to play GoldenEye and StarCraft and Legos. That entrance/exit I talked about yesterday, with all the ghosts, that’s where we waited.
Most of the time, Jon and Ben got permission from their parents to spend the night. Back then, whenever I found a time I could be comfortable and unafraid, I’d cling to it and wish it’d never end. Friday afternoons and nights with Jon and Ben were like that. They were a sanctuary. So were Sunday evenings, when it was just me and mom and I’d sit on the floor covered in blankets and she’d sit on the couch behind me we’d watch a movie. I wished those movies would never end, because once they did, it was time for bed, and that meant school in the morning. I lived with a lot of fear in middle school and I put a lot of hope in the night. Time moves slower in the night. Maybe I saw some possibilities.
I used to lay out in a field under the Milky Way
With everything that I was feeling that I could not say
With every doubt and every sorrow that was in my way
Tearing around inside my head like it was there to stay
Night in my eyes, the night inside me
There where the shadows and the night could hide me
Night in my eyes
Sky full of stars turning over me
Waiting for night to set me free
I left Bluffton-Harrison Middle School for Community Christian School in the middle of 6th grade, during Christmas break. There was a blizzard that year (1998-99). It hit us in early January, just when all the area schools were supposed to re-open. Instead, they stayed closed for another 2 weeks. All told, we were probably out of school for over a month. Every kid remembers that winter. All my friends remember it, because my dad used the snow plow on his big red truck to form a small mountain off the edge of our driveway and we built a snow fort strong enough to hold the weight of several boys.
I don’t remember why exactly I left Bluffton. As I recall, 5th grade was worse than 6th. But I think I’d just had enough. I think I was ready for a change. It so happened that Jordan was, too. He transferred to CCS about 4 weeks after I did. One day, out of the blue, he showed up in Mrs. Compton’s 6th grade class. “Jordan!” It’s a good thing he did. I don’t think I was adjusting well. But he was even weirder than I was and it made me look sort of sane by comparison.
I was delighted to see him. We were close friends in 3rd grade, where we used to create our own comic books and perform wrestling moves on Stanley, a stuffed scarecrow our teacher, Miss Biggs, won in a raffle - we literally beat the stuffing out of that thing (eventually Miss Biggs had to throw it out), but we didn’t share any classes after that until Fortuna brought us together at CCS.
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| Me, on the far left, standing next to Jordan, on Wacky Hair day in Mrs. Compton's 6th grade class at CCS. |
We became best of friends all over again. I watched Jordan beat Metal Gear Solid in its entirety, which means I more or less watched him crawl around in a cardboard box for 14 hours. But I loved it. I remember it vividly. That little white house on the outskirts of town where Jordan and his single mom lived, I did some growing up there. I never had a hard time making friends in school. But I learned something about real friendship that semester. We were 12 or 13, I think.
As I recall, for a little while I fell out of touch with Jon and Ben - new school, new friends, new challenges - but once we turned 15 and got those permits, all bets were off, and we reconnected. I showed up on their front doorstep one day, wearing prescription glasses for the first time since I knew them, and Jon answered the door, “Woah! Brandon!” I’m not sure he recognized me at first.
They invited me to their youth group at a not-so-little Nazarene church with an enormous parking lot. I met my first long term girlfriend there, who happened to like the song "Big Yellow Taxi." I also met a lot of folks who weren’t sure if they were fundamentalists or something else. That church (and that parking lot - oh, baby - that parking lot, I found paradise on that parking lot) became an enormous part of my teenage years.
When I turned 16, Jordan, Jon, and Ben were my closest and oldest friends. That futon, we spent a lot of hours on that futon, sometimes playing Halo, sometimes prepping for a night of mischief, like toilet papering houses or kicking flaming toilet paper or holding toilet paper out the window of a Camaro and letting it unravel (you can have a lot of fun with toilet paper). I did other things on that futon with Big Yellow Taxi girl. That room, from 1986 to 2009, that was my bedroom. Blue carpet. White walls. Brown trim. Those Led Zeppelin posters, I won them at our local street fair. There’s a Calvin and Hobbes book on the arm rest. I recognize the cover. Something Under the Bed is Drooling. I recently moved my pile of Calvin and Hobbes comics and that same book is on the top of the stack, right next to me, right now. Ironic.
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| Okay. It got alota weird. |
I miss that room. I miss those years, from 2002-2005, Jordan, Jon, and Ben were there almost every weekend. A lot of other friends came to that room, too. My mom came to that room, to check on us, make sure everything was alright, to see if we needed any drinks or if we wanted cookies or maybe money to order some pizzas. Years before that, she came to that room to read to me before I went to bed, when I was a child. Sometimes she’d crack the door to that room to let in a little light from the hallway.
She’s divorced now. She’s hurting. She’s living in a little apartment down the road from me. I see her regularly with work and all, but today I went to her place for the first time since she moved there. It’s been a little over a year. I needed some time to heal. I wanted to check on her, make sure everything’s alright. I brought her some red velvet cupcakes. She was very surprised and happy. I hope she eats them. She said she will. I believe her. Next week I’m going to help her figure out what sort of health insurance she ought to get for 2017. I’m doing the best I can. Mental illness, anorexia, she’s got some demons and they’re not her fault. My mom raised me to have a big heart and to be a forgiving person, so much so, that when I was younger I believed that one of my biggest weaknesses was my inability to hold a grudge (and I don’t mean that in a pious way, I mean it seriously). There was no way to know that all that work she was putting in would end up salvaging her relationship with her son. Ironic Advent. I am my mother's son.
It’s the 7th day of Advent. Here I am, waiting for Christmas, but I’m not waiting impatiently. I’m not even sure I’m really waiting at all, not like I waited for mom to pick me up from middle school so I could go spend some time with Jon and Ben. You might say I’m afraid. Because Christmas is going to come, and when it does, nothing will be different, and my mom will still have these demons and if that’s the case, then what’s the point? Maybe if this meditation could be a prayer, if God could let in a little light from the hallway and into her room, then all this writing might be worth a damn, and the birth of Jesus won’t just be something for the spiritually disciplined, but actually, really, for once, something for those who need him the most.
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