Happy birthday, baby May 12, 1983

 

Rumor has it that on this day 32 years ago, I was born.

I can’t validate this because I have not even the dimmest memory of the incident and must take the word of others more conscious of the event than I, though I cannot ask my father since he vanished a few years after the blessed event, my mother claiming, however, he hovered over me at St. Mary’s Hospital in Passaic like a proud rooster.

32?

After all I’ve done in those three decades, I’m surprised I survived.

I’m not alone in this. Paul is 34; Hank, 23, and Garrick, 32 as well, those whom I considered my closest friends.

Twenty years have passed since my first meeting my childhood best friend, Dave, and all the antics we pulled from sneaking into the Clifton Swim Club to perilous treks through Emerald’s Cave,

It’s been 25 years since Thomas Tannis and I marched up the center aisle to receive our First Holy Communion, a week after the rest of our class (Measles caused my delay, I don’t recall the excuse Thomas had.

A quarter century of vivid memories, more vague ones prior to that, yet none of my actual birth.

Life definitely has wings.

It’s been four years since I made up my mind to return to school (after more than a decade of criminal activity and later as a common laborer; five years since being fired from Cosmetic’s Plus, seven years since the failed attempt to reunite with my ex-wife, nine years since my living in the fancy apartment on Paulison Avenue (and the overnight jam sessions with Pauly, since playing silly war games with John Telson (He insisted on being the Nazi), a decade since my recording the band at Melody Lake, and the thousand other tiny memories that make up the landscape of my life so far.

Where did it all go? Have all these years been wasted since I am no closer now to achieving my dreams than when I started. Much of it seems like a road towards self-destruction and I’m not sure just how to turn it all around.

Ten years ago on this day, Hank abandoned me in Middletown, New York, leaving me to wait until morning for the bus to New York where I could get additional transportation home, composing a poem in my head during the wait: “Won’t you be surprised,” as I plotted my revenge against him.

The words hold more truth today even than they did then, though the rage I felt then as evolved into painful nostalgia, as I am surprised that we are still friends, and wonder what surprises are instore for me ten years from now. Perhaps I’ll never become the great writer I ache to become; perhaps the most important thing will be what turns out to be our enduring friendship, and that looking back from then I will see just how I filled my life with good people and good memories, if only life was that simple, if only I can keep alive those moments.

 

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