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Discovering she was going to be living in Colorado indefinitely,
how would my mother get me to stay with her?
By the middle of August, mother decided she should job hunt now that
she was living in Colorado, it seemed Joe might need a few extra
months to realize how much he missed her. She found a job at a
downtown supermarket and began a regular work routine after having
two months off.
Meanwhile, I reminded her that I would be going back to New England
to continue High School. This was a great thing to note on my end as
it wasn't like I had a plane ticket, or any means of getting to an
airport. In fact I only realize now how tenuous my return was
as all she had to do was not buy a plane ticket, or not let me know
dad had sent her one for me, and I would be trapped.
With her working, I pretty much stayed to the same routine of writing
code at home and trying it out three days a week at the local Radio
Shack. By the end of the Summer I had five working computer programs
under my belt and saved to tape. The reason my friend Jonathan had
sought out the TRS-80 Computer in school was because his father had
bought him one as part of preparing him for his eventual career as an
Engineer. As a result I was eagerly anticipating my return to New
England so I could show off the games I had created over the summer
break.
With the end of August rapidly approaching, mother took her new found
earnings and tried to woo me to stay in Colorado by giving me money
to buy a number of record albums. She also bought me a customized
bed; as I reached my early teens, I had neared my adult height of
just under six feet tall. This left my feet and head bumping into
the head and foot boards of the bunk beds and I had taken up sleeping
crouched sideways to fit. The bed mother had built
for me was longer than the typical twin bed. The good news was I
could lie flat in it and my feet wouldn't be hanging over the end,
the bad news was stores didn't have sheets that size for sale, so
mother took the more worn sheets from my bunk bed days and cut them
up into quarters. She then sewed them to the end of the better
looking sheets, thus giving me sets long enough to fit the bed. She
made sure all the sown-on pieces were at the foot of the bed so
they'd be hidden by the blanket and comforter, but when lying on the
bed I'd feel the sown ridges against my calves and I had to be
careful sliding my legs in and out of the bed less my toe nails
catch.
She further made sure she and I filled-in my bedroom by unpacking
everything, getting it nicely in the closet, hung on the walls, on
the shelves and generally make the new apartment's bedroom everything
I'd want in a bedroom. She then started talking about where I'd go
to school. I reminded her that I was returning to New England
for school. She then started to openly lobby me to stay as
she didn't want to be alone. I reminded her of my not as older
brother living nearby in Denver but she said she had been
disappointed that he hadn't visited more often. I think he had come
at least once every other week which seemed more often than when we
lived at the New England apartment, but in reality what she meant was
she didn't want to be in a town where she knew no one and she
wouldn't even have me anymore as her unwilling confidante.
I assured her that I was going
back to New England to finish school.
So she then tried the threatening path. If I went back to New
England, I would lose everything! All my stuff, all my
books, all my games, all my record albums, my stereo, etc. All I'd
have to take back with me was one suitcase of clothes. I felt
that was a fair deal in return
for finishing High School with the friends I had known for all my
years. Further, I already had my bedroom at dad's house with much of
my stuff in it and, most importantly to me at the time, I had the
cassette tape of my computer programs. For me, it was the true
measure of what I had gained during that first Summer in Colorado.
But I didn't share any of this with her, I just said: ''Okay.''
I don't know who bought the airplane ticket back to New England for
me. And in fact, during all my summers visiting mother in Colorado I
never knew who did, but I suspected there was a little trade-off
between the parents. The Wednesday before Labor day I stopped by the
Radio Shack one last time and said goodbye to Ralph and the new guy
who'd recently joined the store. Mother actually made dinner for us
that night and I packed my one allowed suit case, cassette tape
hidden inside and I was taken to the airport. The flight back was,
thankfully, non-stop so I didn't have to worry about changing planes,
this being my first flight alone. Father met me at the gate in Logan
airport, and drove me home.
It was a quiet drive back to the home town and I was so thankful to
be getting back. As we arrived at the house and I got my suitcase
out of the back of the car, this was when my father mentioned that I
would need to stay in another bedroom, now. During the Summer, he
had emptied out my family home bedroom to make it his library. He
had mounted all the walls with board and bracket shelves and his
science fiction book collection was now housed there. This stunned
me as I hadn't expected to come home to find my bedroom was gone.
All my belongings in it, he had gotten rid off. No
trace remained. Despite the fact that the adjoining
bedroom next to his was the empty white room where my eldest brother
had sketched the nude on the wall six years earlier, my father didn't
use that. My eldest brother's original bedroom, that even my not as
older brother hadn't used for over the past two years, that remained
untouched as well. The empty bedroom that had originally been my
sister's, then my mother's and eventually my not as older brother's
during his last year living at the house, my father hadn't used that
room either even though all it had was the bed frame and bare
mattress.
It was that last bedroom that my father pointed me to as the place
where I could stay. My eldest brother's bedroom was right next
door as a ready to use bedroom, but as I'd been pointed to the room
with the bare bed, that's where I went to. As my father picked me up
late at the airport given the two hour difference between Colorado
time and New England time, it was after dinner and Pappy was already
watching evening shows in his apartment, if not to bed, so there was
little to do but go to bed, myself.
But as I was on Colorado time, I wasn't sleepy at all. I looked out
the bedroom window for a bit, the same one I had first spied the
haying machines from twelve years earlier, but the hayfield was too
dark to make out anything. Instead my eyes were drawn to the main
grocery store lights peaking through the trees beyond and the edge of
the shopping strip that had been built next to the store during the
intervening years. After a while, not knowing where any bedsheets or
pillows might be kept and not wanting to disturb my father who had
gone to bed, I just curled up on the bare mattress and tucked my
elbow under my temple for a pillow.
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