Memento Mori
memento mori \mi-ment-o-mor-e\ n, pl memento mori [L, remember that you must die]
1 : a reminder of mortality; esp: DEATH'S HEAD
2 : a reminder of man's failures or mistakes
My dad turned to me, grown, and asked, over the radio's steel voice, "Do you remember?"
Remember? Where do I begin to remember? I remember the sickly gleam of black ice on a bend of road near Mount Vernon. I remember the sudden flapping wings of a quail at my feet leaving my heart beating as fast as it flapped away. I remember the pungent smell of Old Spice when grandpa hugged me into his neck. I remember many things. Things I'd rather not remember. And things that make me long for the past. That I ache ... I remember that ache.
His hand gripped the wheel with confident ease guiding us smoothly down the Alaskan Way Viaduct. My eyes pled with the surroundings for a clue only to be answered with cryptic flashes of afternoon sunlight reflecting off the city's mirrored panes and the bruised body of Elliot Bay where a parasailor floated away from the waves, edging towards the sun like a lassoed Icarus.
My dad looked from the road to me again as if to say, Well, do you remember?
I said, "No." Our conversation seemed disjointed, as had most of our conversations since I'd reached the age of man.
He sighed. A sigh usually followed by "Shit," a word he often used to express himself. Ranging from his aw-shucks "Shit," said with a warm smile after a good anecdote, joke, or interesting factoid, to the seemingly unconscious "Shit" he'd repeat over and over, like a vulgar mantra, as he performed a task, to the insane bursts of fatherly anger when spit would fly from his contorted mouth with a venomous "shhhh..." before the thunderously compact "...it" that sent tremors through my childhood... But this time his sigh, thankfully, remained only a wearisome sigh.
"Turn it up," my mother ordered from the backseat.
I reached for the serated knob and with a twist turned up the radio. The Beatles' The Long and Winding Road drained out, softly swarming within the car. I remembered sitting Indian-style on long-haired, puke-green carpet with oversized headphones on, listening to that song spinning out from under the phonograph needle into my ears as my mother coated the air with swirling plumes of Kent 100's smoke, feet kicked up in a plush orange recliner, watching Donahue.
"You'll remember," my dad assured me in a flat tone.
I looked away to my right -- the familiarity of the city intoning like weather-worn lines of poetry as deeply rooted within me as my very own heartbeat. I spotted an open window on the top floor of the Pike Place Market, a window I had once stared out, fascinated by the city's delicate swarm and the shades of Elliot Bay under dreary October skies, while eating lunch with friends at the Athenian SeaFood Restaurant.
I pointed to the window and said, "That's where Jeannie, Sara, her little boy Jayce, and I ate."
My brother Bryan responded from behind me with an uninterested, "Hmm."
"The one with the big tits?" my dad asked, referring to Jeannie.
I answered by rolling my window down a turn, letting the rushing hum of moving pavement mix with the horn and string accompaniment on the radio.
"A long long time agooo-ooo," my mother's slightly soured, soprano voice overlayed Paul McCartney's.
The viaduct bent to the right, my dad's column of knuckles easing along the curve with a gentleness he was unable to share with me, or I with him.
The Battery Street Tunnel loomed into view. We neared the lip of its entrance when, without forewarning, my dad counted down, "Three...two... one," sucking in a lungful of air and holding it. I realized I had unconsciously followed his lead, holding my breath alongside him as we drove on, entering through a gate of light into darkness.
"You left me standing there," my mother crooned.
"What are they doing?" Bryan asked her. But she continued singing, his words falling wilted on the vinyl backseat.
My dad and I faced forward watching the black pavement unfurl around each bend revealing in that tunnel twilight only more shrouded pavement ahead. We glanced at one another, checking to see if either of us was cheating, with thin, silent breaths.
The airless darkness between us evoked a childhood memory of when I entered my parents bedroom, lights off, and they told me to go away. Instead, I closed the door, pretending that I had left, and quietly laid down on a pile of clothing on the floor, holding my breath, trying not to laugh aloud. Moments passed, the bed's covers rustled above, and I laughed, unable to contain my innocent secret any longer. My dad yelled ferociously, "Get the fuck out of here!" I opened the door, confused and frightened, and dashed to my bedroom to hide.
"Lead me to your doorrrrr," my mother continued.
My dad's right hand began moving in a circular, hurry-up motion, as if summoning the tunnel's end. My lungs tightened and burned, the body's impulse to breathe surging with need.
I envisioned the tunnel as a womb. The car, a steel sack of amniotic fluid incubating us. Our held breath, anticipation of that final contraction of concrete muscles pushing us forward. I held the door handle. My dad's hurry-up rotations quickened. The edge of light neared. Its illuminated lip, freedom. Our wheels pushed on and passed out of darkness into a splash of light.
We released a long gush of air and laughed.
"I forgot all about that," I said.
"Forgot what?" Bryan asked, head peeking forward between our shoulders. "Why were you guys holding your breath?"
"We used to always do that when driving through a tunnel," I tried to explain.
"Why though?" Bryan persisted.
"Tradition," my dad said, looking at me with a slight smile.
"Yeah yeah yeahhhh," my mother ended her song.
I looked to him as he drove on through this puddle of light pooled between the dark shores of eternities, watching his smile that hid every word, and I thought, I remember you.
Ron Gibson Jr. is a writer living in Seattle, Washington whose work has appeared in various small press zines. He was missing for awhile but can now be found at gibsonr@mindspring.com.
