Beyond the End of the Driveway

Posted on July 9, 2003 in Adolescence Book of Days PTSD

Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: Write about what you wanted to do.

I had long dreams when I was still trapped in the house on 25th Street. Dreams that swept well beyond the lawn. In those oneiric days, the Bermuda grass ran all the way to the base of the San Bernardino Mountains, which blocked my view to the free lands that I knew existed to the north.

I argued with my mother a lot. She’d start them by coming in my room where I was reading or writing, screaming at me for some chore I hadn’t done like putting away the dishes in the dishwasher or starting dinner so that it would be ready at the precise moment when she came in the door after a long hard day working at the clinic. Timing was everything, she believed, and whatever I didn’t do ruptured the cycle of the universe so badly that the guilt had to be layered on me more heavily than the shale and sandstone formations in the Grand Canyon.

In those days, my high school years, my Catholic parents had arranged what amounted to a five day a week divorce. Dad worked at the Naval Weapons Center in China Lake, more than 120 miles away, and came home on weekends to fight with my mother over me or the finances or his diet or some other stupidity. When he wasn’t around during the week, she nagged me. Her bellicose intrusions into my room, the arguments that she could never let go of, prompted me on more than one occasion to get up and head out the front door. “That’s it,” I’d cry. “I’m getting out of here.”

What did I think I’d do? To tell the truth, all I ever thought about was walking, strolling with determination down an endless silver flat that was dimly outlined by sidewalks, hedges, and houses. There was never a destination, never hunger, never suicide. Just the journey that might take me to the sea and up the coast.

My mother never let me get beyond the edge of the driveway. She’d come out crying my name for all to hear, holding up my college, my virginity, and my safety. The embarassment of her screaming and clutching at me brought me back every time. The miles-long stretch of the lawn was real in my mind: I could never get far enough down that driveway to escape her.

I hoped to discover adoption papers. I wished that I had no parents. The desire to escape so obsessed me that when I finally did get to take that silver walk that took me out of their reach, I had no idea where I was going.

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Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: Write about a postcard.