Updated
Randomly
By Wyrm
A few weeks ago, my family was approved for a loan to get a new house. Today, we clear the way for the workers to move our old “Manufactured” home back so they can break new ground for the foundation.
Clearing the way involved something I never thought I would do in a million years…
First, a little history:
My family and I had moved to the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex (yes, it’s a word) when I was about four years old. I say about because, being four, I can’t remember when exactly we moved here. I may have been 3, possibly 4. My birthday lies on a screwy point on the calendar where it’s not fall, nor summer, and where I’m too young to start school with kids my age, but too old for when I started school the next year
Anyway, my family had moved to the Metroplex, Glenn Heights to be specific, Bear Creek community to be exact. My parents had purchased a single-wide mobile home and moved in. a few months later, we moved to where we are now, Red Oak. It’s a fairly decent 1 ½ acres lot that at the time, was country (not the crappy music kind).
After we had settled here, my dad had decided to plant a couple trees. My father had always loved trees. I can’t explain why, even though I seem to have acquired some of that from him. It was here I had made my first best friend. Gary, who lived across the street was the only real friend I had at the time. He was about as old as I, and almost as odd, if a bit more weird. We’d do all sorts of stuff boys do in the time before Nintendo was big. We’d play in the street, go fishing for non-existent crawfish, an make him drink stuff you normally wouldn’t do.
After a few years, his parents got divorced and they moved away. It took me a few years to realize he wasn’t coming back…
I also had my first crush, my first girlfriend and my first kiss here. There was this girl Angelina who lived at the front end of the street. She also had a pool. You know if there is a girl and a pool, you hit the jackpot. What’s more, she had a cute neighbor across the street from her that was absolutely beautiful and always went to Angelina’s house to swim. She was fun to look at, but way older than me. Angelina and I, however, grew to be really close friends.
So close in fact, I even dared to play with her Barbies. Even if she had her friends around. My family and hers became close and we became almost inseparable. I was a constant visitor at her house, eating their food and drinking their sodas. She was also the one I had my first kiss with. One of those under the water bubble kinds. If you’ve ever seen one of those kissing fishes, that’s what we looked like. It was pleasant for as long as it lasted. She still lives at the end of the street and I see her every so often, but suffice it to say, we’ve grown far apart.
Now comes the pertinent part.
My dad had started to build a deck to the front door. He had poured all of himself into the construction of it. I had helped some, but I was too young and too lazy to help with most of it. It was probably the first project that he and I had done together, and I was too young and careless to understand the caliber of it.
Today, My father and I took an axe to those trees with which he and I had taken so much care to. Mostly him. He was the one who went out every Saturday morning at the crack of dawn, feeding and watering those trees, no matter how tired he got, or how late he had worked the day before. He showed every tree the love and tenderness he showed me, his son.
I didn’t realize this till after we had dragged the last of the branches of the tree to the heap in the back and I heard him say, “Mijo, they were my heart, but I had to do it. Thank you for helping me.”
It was then I realized how much of a child I really was, and how much older he seemed to me. And there, I wondered if I would be the man he was and is when I grew to his age, and how good of a husband I would be to my wife. If I could even hold a candle up to him as a father to my own children.
A few hours later, I had to start dismantling the deck he had built. I felt a tugging at my heart and a constricting of my throat as I tried to remove the pieces that were put there with love.
These weren’t just trees, or a deck, they were monuments to the bond of a man and his son. I had thought these things would be here forever. The trees, the porch, the house…
Most people aren’t so lucky to know when their life changes from the comfort and security of youth, to the stark realities of being an adult. In two months, the last major bastion of my childhood will be removed, possibly reduced to scrap. I have lost the place I have called home for the last 17 years. I have lost childhood friends that barely exist as memories. I have lost part of the earth I had helped grow from small saplings to the towers they once were. I have lost projects that my father and I had worked on. And soon, I know I will lose my parents.
In all this loss, however, I can think of the things I can have with my children and hope I can give them these kind of memories. This new house is good for us. To build anew, you have to remove the old. To look to the future, you have to let go of the past.
It’s just too bad that when my children grow of age, I can’t show them all the things my parents have accomplished.
But I can show them my parents’ greatest work. The one legacy they can definitely be proud of. I can show them their father and teach them everything their father has learned. And maybe, my own parents legacy won’t stop with me, and that when it comes time for me to add to it, it will be worthy of their praise.
I need to find a kleenix. My allergies are getting out of control…
--Wyrm
--Past Rants--
Dancing Firelight
and Shadows by Prax
Helter Skelter in a Summer Swelter
Cheap Shots for
Fun and Profit by Dragonel
Asst. Editor: Prax