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Dear Caelan,
Like you, I saw little of my father when I was a child, my parents having separated prior to my memory becoming fully functional. When I visit Shreveport next January, one of the first things I want to see is a home movie Aunt Millie (my mother's younger sister) took of my parents' wedding. I knew my father well enough to be happy for my sake and my mother's that he was not around more or longer, but remain fascinated with seeing the two of them together and wondering just what kind of couple they were, how they became that couple, and how they stopped being that couple.
On the night my parents first met, my mother and Lloyd (her first husband, father to your Aunt Heloise) invited my Aunt Millie to bring a date to their house for spaghetti and a bridge game. That date was my father(Millie was no longer dating Elvis Presley by this time), and the first thing my mother remembers him saying to her was, "I make better spaghetti than that." Your mother and I were a bit more romantic, not that criticizing someone's cooking is a tough act to beat in the arts d'amour.
We worked together in the financial aid office at our college, Virginia Commonwealth University, and lived under two blocks apart. Our job duties did not intersect, and we barely spoke to one another in the office for several months. Since we often found ourselves walking home at the same time and on the same streets, however, we gradually became more cordial. Neither of us were very sociable, and your mother never showed any indication that my company enhanced her walk home in any way. I suspected, or at least wanted to believe that she had accepted me as being a little more intelligent, sensitive, entertaining and polite than most men, but she never offered firm proof that I was anything but less of an annoyance than the majority of Mankind.
One spring day after the weather had warmed, however, she accidentally gave me the lever I wanted more and more to become closer to her. Just before our paths parted on the walk home, she mentioned that cold beer would certainly improve that hot afternoon. Twenty minutes later, I knocked on her door in my little blue shorts with an eight-pack of Miller pony bottles under my arm. Surprised and dubious about my intrusion on her life and private space, she hesitantly answered her door. We talked about our past and present lives, and decided to venture out for a walk to Maymont Park (where I first saw you) after the sun had gone down and the beer had run out.
Once at the park, lightheaded with beer, youth, and the unexpected pleasure we had found in each others' company, we found ourselves on the outskirts of a large religious meeting. As well over a hundred fervent black Baptists saved one anothers' souls by torchlight, your mother and I kissed in the darkness on the side of a grassy knoll. We have indisputably proven many times, finally even to our own stubborn selves, that we are not good constant company for one another, but have a very special relationship because of some of the perfect moments we've shared and the unimpeachable memories of those moments, the first of which was of that kiss.
The school year ended very shortly after that night, and we didn't see much of each other before going our separate ways for the summer; I to Louisiana, she to Venezuela and Northern Virginia. I remember trying to be affectionate with her in the office one day, attempting to hold her hand or stroke her arm or put my arm around her or something and having her recoil and say, "Don't do that." She was always very protective of her own space. I also remember writing a song called "Outlast the Night" about my hopes that I would see her again after the second time she allowed me into her apartment. One day, I hope to play that song for you in person.
Anyway, after returning to Northern Virginia from what she described as an unsatisfactory trip to Venezuela, your mother started trying to call me in Shreveport. Never close to my father's side of the family, I was not at any of the "Shuey" listings she found through directory assistance, but she eventually found me dozing on a rubber raft in your great aunt Johnette's pool with the ice melting in my planter's punch, and we made plans by phone and mail to see one another upon my return to Virginia. I got back to Richmond in mid-August, found an apartment and got my furniture out of storage, and drove up to Northern Virginia to bring your mother down for a weekend's wooing. There was much laughter and joy during that weekend and the ones that followed. Eventually, other elements entered into our time together, in such quantities that it became impossible for your mother and I to see one another through them, but I don't think the fun ever got completely away from us.
By the time you read this, you will surely be familiar with the story of Pandora's box. To refresh your memory and in case education goes to hell in a handbasket so extensively that common Graeco-Roman myths are no longer shared with children, Pandora was made by the Gods as a gift to Prometheus, a Titan who had formed Man of clay. Along with Pandora, there came to the house of Prometheus a box, bound in golden wire, which Pandora was instructed by both the Gods and Prometheus not to open. Her curiosity finally got the better of her, though, and one day, she unwound the gold wire, thinking to have just one peek into the mysterious box to see what it contained.
When the first bit of light entered the box, however, it sprang open and a swarm of tiny demons flew out. All equipped with stingers, spears, and other sharp little instruments, they began to jab painfully at Pandora and to fly out the window to assail her neighbors and the rest of Mankind. The demons were Spite, Envy, Jealousy, Fear, Hate, Greed, Poverty, and the rest of the thousands of petty woes that afflict human beings; loose for the first time in that long ago Golden Age by Pandora's curiosity. Struggling as hard as she could, Pandora was finally able to seal the box again, but it seemed too late, as she could hear all of her neighbors begin to scream and shout in dismay as they encountered these new afflictions. Prometheus ran into the room, stung and swollen from the attacks of the demons, and told Pandora what a horrible thing she had done.
Finally, when Prometheus paused for breath, he and Pandora heard a small, thin, sweet voice coming from the box, asking to be let out. Doubtful at first, they at last decided that whatever single creature was left inside could not do any more harm than was already being done in the world by the creatures that had already escaped. They unwound the gold wire again, and, huddled in a corner of the box in a pool of soft light lay one beautiful, frail fairy with butterfly wings and a gown spun from spider webs and jeweled with springtime dew. This final occupant of the box, now struggling feebly into the air and gently curing the stings inflicted by the demons with gentle pats of her tiny hands, was Hope, and she goes through the world to this day behind Malice, Suspicion, and all of the demons who had shared the box with her, curing the injuries to Mankind that they bring about.
Similarly, your mother and I set loose a swarm of demons on ourselves and one another, and then you came along to cure all of the bad memories. Your mother's recollections may vary.
These pages describe the delusions, fantasies &