10.3.11

 
Shame
I did not know my maternal grandfather very well; at least, I have very few memories of him. I remember that he loved shortbread and small tins of cookies could often be found around the house. I remember that he would sit in a chair by a large window on the second story of the house and that I would often sit behind it. I remember the almost forbidden nature of an office downstairs that had all his things in it. But mostly I just remember watching television (All That!), lying on the polar-bear-skin rug, playing with the small organ/ piano next to the fireplace, sleeping in a room full of droopy-eyed dolls, the large wooden Buddha on the staircase, the wooden chairs with dragons carved into the armrests, a giant clock, a giant window, an indoor pool that I tried not to splash too much in, the red-rocked landscape around the house, playing arcade games in town.

It was my brother, although much younger than I was, who actually seemed to have a stronger bond with our grandfather. As I was the attention stealer, my brother seemed to settle more into a genuine, peaceful state of being. Perhaps I don't remember grandpa as well because of how concerned I've always been with myself - even those memories I do have of him are based on my own interactions. I cry out now for more observation, but find none; perhaps my brother better remembers, his sincere innocence holding truer to the wholeness of the man. I hope so, even as a pang of jealousy and self-rebuke gazes back and wishes for a more personal curiosity.

***

One day I was playing with a friend in my backyard. There was a red basket of old toys in the yard and, as we were playing, I kept hearing a strange noise emanating from the basket. It was sort of a plastic grinding noise, the kind that cheap wind-up toys make when they are walking or driving across the table, or doing a back flip, or chomping their giant teeth on some invisible, superfluous enemy.

We continued playing, but the noise insisted - the gentle plea of something long-neglected. Or perhaps not, perhaps just the simple expression of something so long in playing with that it reveled in this new dutiful rendition of its noise, which seemed to grow ever louder.

In the excitement of play, I suddenly turned my attention to the basket. The sound had not so much annoyed me, but as my companion's attention had also been turned to the noise, I was obviously obligated to incorporate it into my performance. Given too much leeway, the noise could have completely divided his attention, which I could not allow.

I approached the basket, making some exaggerated comment about the noise; he laughed, my scene was progressing excellently. I searched through the basket to find the source; the basket was full of guns and cars and miscellaneous pieces of past adventures. The last thing I expected to find was...a toy train? It was small, comparable to any given Hot Wheel also found at times in the basket. It seemed a bit older though, something quite distinctive from its flashy contemporaries. Green, it was a small green steam engine that, invigorated by some invisible Duracell, had been chugging along some distant reverie; pulling its faithful wheels through an abandoned desert, the crisp, dry smell of cactus and tumbleweed trapped in the boiling estuary of sun and rock, thus forcing the aroma to blossom slowly and permeate its barren eternity. The train asked nothing but to ramble on in its dream, in its nonchalant, joyful canter.

But I had my audience in perfect, rapt attention. I searched the toy for the "off" switch and found it, but then quickly realized that simply turning it off would have very little artistic value. What could I do to make the scene more dramatic, more powerful?

I turned the train off, but then back on, dropping it back into the basket, its tiny wheels still grinding. My audience was intrigued, I delivered a perfect mask of overbearing frustration, he laughed, I drank in his curiosity and childish delight, it fueled me, intoxicating me sufficiently to abandon simple reason. I dove back into the basket and pulled out the enraging perpetrator, the tool of my addiction, the damned soul. The passion in my eyes and mind burned in the chaos of a child's condemnation. I held the engine before the world, wishing nothing more than to bring it to a terrible end, to seal the act of this momentous play with a momentary hatred bent to crucify.

With its wheels still whirling gently, I turned and hurled the train. It flew ever so gracefully and then, in romantic brilliance, exploded against the stone wall of my backyard. The noise had stopped forever.

Later that day, my friend long since having left the theatre, I sat inside. My brother was outside playing alone when he happened upon the remnants of my sacrifice. He picked up the pieces and began to weep; deep, powerful, heartfelt sobs - not of the scraped-knee brand, or of the leave-the-toy-store-without-the-game type - this was much more. It was the terrifying onset of grief, the realization of a pure ideal suddenly being ripped from the world in horrid, undeserving malice. At his tiny fingertips lay the pieces of a dear friend, a link to a meaningful past that now had been smashed and violated - the pureness of the bond being mocked in the selfish assurance of its end.

So innocent were his sobs, so genuine; the approach of despair to a child: not jealous, not vengeful, not angry, only intensely sorrowful, not knowing what to try to understand, only feeling the extreme unfairness of the moment, the incomprehensible hurt of an unblemished loss.

My mother went outside to comfort him, told him it was okay, asked him what had happened.

"This was my train from grandpa; this was grandpa's train he gave me."