In 1989 my mother and I went to the nicest restaurant
in our small town. It was the big reopening
after it had been closed due to a bad fire the month before.

We used to eat there all the time. It was always just the two
of us. Even after two brothers and a sister came along.
I suppose in the grand scheme of small things,
it wasn’t that nice a restaurant. But children are easy to please
and small towns can make a lot of something Victoria
would have swallowed up in the first week.

My mother and I always had fun. It didn’t take much
in them days to make me feel like an adult. I ordered on my own,
drank good Earl Grey tea and complained bitterly about my classmates.

We always had fun. It was still fun when we went for that big reopening.
You couldn’t even tell that half the place had gone up in flames.
No one talked about it. The body count was never able to rise
above zero. I was five and didn’t think much of the whole thing at all.

Back then I was pretty committed to The Lord. I prayed for my family,
prayed for myself and assumed I was building up a line of credit
that would make me invincible for most of my teenage and even adult years.

I was even committed to straight lines
and the personal opinion that all a person ever needed
to make everything okay was sincerity.

On Friday afternoons I would wipe the blood from my nose
and laugh with them as best I could.

So I wasn’t surprised that the restaurant
was the same as it had ever been. My mother and I ordered tea,
talked about school and didn’t say a word about my father
or any of the siblings. I guess I always wanted to be an only child.

In my old age I’m not quite that selfish,
but you can still see that in me from time to time.

I think I was just happy to have someone’s undivided attention. So much
that I didn’t really think much of the way it always smelled like
the smoke from the kitchen had just become a threat. I didn’t say a word
about the fork that moved across the table when my mother wasn’t looking.

I didn’t even bring up the sudden anxiety attack that had me convinced
by the time our cheque came that we were too far
in the back of the restaurant to get out safely. Assuming someone
came out of the kitchen and asked as politely as a person
on fire could for a glass of water and a first-rate burn ward.

It was a new thing not being able to tell my imagination
to calm down and enjoy the weather. I wasn’t used to
bad dreams that could talk back, hide their faces
under comical fists
and didn’t need that messy business of sleep after a long time
of laying very, very still and trying not think very much.

Nothing happened. There was no fire,
and I felt better as we paid for the meal and left.

Outside I noticed a face pass through the middle
of the glass in the window, but it was gone before
I could tell my mother. It was as startling as the figure I then noticed
in the clouds overhead. The shape was all clumps of rain and lightning,
but that sword was pretty easy to figure out.

I held my mother’s hand
and tried to assume the best of everything
that was bigger than what I could think to say
at eight p.m. every night.

Over the years I’ve become increasingly frustrated
with things that are greater than the best a child
can think of when it comes to hope and brazen common sense.

10/27/2010

Author's Note: a bit longer and more straightforward (to me) than usual, but it's a story i've been meaning to tell for a long time, and a poetry seemed to be the best medium for it. lord knows i've probably written about this place before, but never in quite this detail. i don't think i did my idea justice, but then again what the hell do i know?

Posted on 10/27/2010
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