10.19.11

I remember it as a perfect day in California, only a few skim-milky clouds spreading thin across a pale sky. I like to think that an airplane or two crossed that weightless sky as they often did. My mother and I were in the backyard of our house. I remember the backyard only slightly - there was a small table and chairs, the table may have even had a large umbrella to shade it from Valencia's heavy July's and August's. That was the same house that resided across the street for a taller house that had, at the tip of its roof, a small concrete cap that always looked like snow to me. Ironic too as I do not remember it ever snowing there, though it did once - we have pictures.

That was the same house from which we moved when I was still relatively young. I remember sitting in the passenger seat of our car as my mother drove us away, down Gaucho Ct. one last time. As we reached the corner of Gaucho and Magdalena, she began to weep. As I reflect now, I can only imagine what she felt - perhaps that strange quasi-grief that so often accompanies us when we move on to a new stage of life, a feeling of gentle peace and loss that simmers late into the evening, pushing our minds into reverie as we go from Magdalena to Del Monte to Estaban, down John Russell to Alta Dr., where the years of this new stage will sweep by in brilliance.

But all that is to come; for now, my mother and I are still in the backyard on Gaucho Ct. A tall wooden fence surrounds the backyard, a dark, dry wood that is frequented with knotted holes just big enough to peek through. One time I remember observing a gigantic grasshopper crawl across the fence on the left side of the patio - it was about as big as my whole head, maybe my entire body, it inevitably gets bigger every time I am brave enough to recall the memory. Suddenly the grasshopper haphazardly jumped off the fence and attacked me; I am still terrified of grasshoppers.

My dear mother will not budge, she has a plate of macaroni and cheese in front of her and is wielding a fork with one solitary, cheesy noodle impaled upon it. I do not want to eat the noodle; my mind cries against it in childish drama. I simultaneously crave the attention of my mother, fear the social implications of walking away, and am adamantly determined never to admit that menacing noodle into my tiny mouth. I do not want to eat the noodle! Why do I have to eat it!? Its gross; I don't like it; I don't want it!

Surprisingly, I'm not sure entirely why I don't want it. I mean, it might not taste amazing, but what am I so afraid of? And I afraid it will kill me? Not really. Hurt me? No. Cause emotional duress? Leave a bad taste in my mouth? Induce violent convulsions? No, maybe a little, but not really, and no. Are any of my friends there to make fun of me? No. Wow, I'm really running out of possibilities...

Somehow the situation embarrasses me; somehow I have decided that I do not want to eat the noodle (perhaps due to its purely undesirable unknown-ness) and that now eating it would have some adverse effect on my control of the scenario. My mother doesn't understand: she thinks that eating the noodle will help me overcome some trivial fear of the unknown. Little does she know how badly she is upsetting the complete social comfort of my life that I worked so desperately hard to achieve; an environment where I simply do not do what I don't want to do - what is she trying to pull!? I do not want to eat the noodle!

My mother understood perfectly. Years of mature confidence and patience now paid off as she brandished that cursed silverware with its painfully unrelenting noodle. She waited, resolute in winning this mental battle, in staking her claim and completely derailing the institutional cohesion of my wonderfully parasitic utopia. But I was fixed there too with something far more dangerous than patience, confidence, and determination: love.

To this day, I hate macaroni and cheese. To this day I shudder at its gooey consistency and the squishy sounds of cheese and noodle and bowl. To this day I hesitate to accept such apparently undesirable dishes into my mouth and stomach; into my being. And to this day I remember somewhere deep within me the lesson of that one lonesome noodle. And though I may weep and kick and hurt that such a noodle be presented me, ultimately I must take it and eat it, just like I did on that early-summer's day. And once the noodle hits my mouth and I begin to chew I inevitably remember that mac and cheese doesn't taste so bad or that, even if it does, the reasons that fix me there seem to always infuse the pain of chews and swallows with something from my mother's tender, deep desire.