The System of the Downs

I am the memory keeper. It is the cross I bear. I never set out to be the person who rarely forgets things. In fact, so many times, I am barraged by the things I wish I could forget: the dark things, the heavy things, the things ridden with the sins of the unfortunate. Yet, there they are and here am I. Early on, I realized things made better sense to me in picture format. Words are difficult to process, but if I can create a mental painting of your words, they tend to make more sense. They also tuck themselves into the crevices of my brain like a computer with an everincreasing prepaid Google photo membership. I don’t remember everything, either. Try me. If it happened in the last 15 years, game over. I won’t have the faintest idea. But if you wanted to know the color of the Easter outfit I wore when I was two, it was blue and it was actually pants. There were ducks on the waistband. The Peter Pan collar was white. On my first date with my husband, I wore Tommy Hilfiger low rise flare jeans with a white scoop neck T-shirt from a store called The Rave. I had The Rachel haircut parted on my left side. We both ordered Tecate and were told they didn’t carry that brand. He tripped over my large mom purse that had slid off the back of the restaurant chair, almost hitting his head on the corner of the table. I can see it like a scene in a movie. And, I remember the day in 1984 when my best friend Mary Kay told me the name of her favorite song.

There’s a time in a girl’s life, around driving age, where everything changes. I can only speak for myself. Maybe boys are like this, too. I wanted to be seen in a certain light. Worldly. Sophisticated. No more Love’s Baby Soft. Now I only wear Germaine Monteil’s Champagne. Seriously, that was the best perfume. Powers that be, please bring it back. We are oh so busy doing things like deciding who we want to be based not on what we like but what we want others to take away from experiencing us. We work backwards in programming ourselves. I want _____ (name of boy du jour) to think I’m very European and artsy, so I need to season my conversation with words like avant-garde and make sure to use my transatlantic accent instead of my Seagovillian one. I’ll practice posturing my hands like a mannequin as to appear cultured. Does Bennigan’s set the table with salad forks or dessert spoons? It’s maddening, the lengths I went to trying to be something I wasn’t. That’s why it was earth shattering on an unseasonably warm day in October of my senior year in high school when I sauntered through the gym looking for my secondary baton. See, I was a majorette, albeit not an amazing one. Still, I could twirl double batons, provided I did not attempt double star throws. I always seemed to catch a baton to the face. Tulip throws were fine. Star throws were another story. Anyway, we’d been practicing for a pep rally on this Thursday afternoon. I’d walked off with my main baton, but the one I’d borrowed from the storage room in the band hall, presumably left over from an awesome majorette who probably did amazing star throws, had gotten left behind. The cheerleaders had taken over the gym, practicing cheers for the following afternoon’s performance. My friend Mary Kay was the mascot. While she wasn’t in full uniform, she was wearing her mascot head. They were on break. We were standing by the water fountain. I was messing with my Swatch watch and chatting with my friend instead of looking for the lost baton. I told Mary Kay I was really into punk. Like, “Hey, I’m really into punk now. Have you ever heard of Siouxsie and the Banshees?” Mary took her huge royal blue and white dragon head off. She knitted her eyebrows together, mostly because she couldn’t wear her glasses and the dragon head at the same time, so she was probably trying to get my face into focus. “No,” she said. “I’ve never heard of them.” “Well,” I remarked, “What’s your favorite song?” She didn’t skip a beat when she said, “You Light Up My Life.” Mind you, that was an old song, even then. It wasn’t a cool song. It was a song popular when we were 10-year-olds. It was an identity we were trying to shed. It wasn’t sophisticated. I was perplexed. But, it was Mary Kay. Even then she could pull off Debby Boone and cool in the same breath.

Here we are 40 years later. I rarely see Mary Kay. She’s been in Florida for ages. I do talk to her, though not as often as I’d like. She called me on Christmas morning the first year I’d lost Chynna. She told me something special, something she said she’d never told anyone else. It changed my Christmas day. I was there when her mom had knee surgery, immediately sensing things weren’t ok. Turns out, our moms died within a year of each other, both from Alzheimer’s. But, and this is the good part, what I need you to understand about her is, she’s fearless. For the last 5 years, she’s been section hiking the Appalachian Trail. Her trail name is Twister. She was a social worker who became a content writer for social workers who became an implementation trainer for the very material she wrote. And, she’s an amazing mom who just happens to take a couple of weeks off to SOLO HIKE THE STINKING APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS. This year she retired, so she’s finishing the AT, from New Jersey to Maine – from April to July. She just crossed the 1400-mile mark, and she has her sights set on the finish line. As I was leaving the cemetery this week, after putting out new flowers for my daughter, unfurling the wind chimes, detangling the ribbons, fluffing the flowers, I got back into my car. Usually, I am beyond sad when I leave. I sit in the car, cry, sometimes scream, and occasionally hit the steering wheel with the heel of my hand as hard as I can. But, this day, the radio came on as I turned the key. It was Debbie Boone. You Light Up My Life was playing. I thought of my friend hiking so far away, all alone. When you’re in the mountains, you are either on an up or a down. It’s exactly what you think. Mary Kay loves the downs. So, tonight, I pray for the downs. Good luck, Twister. You light up lives, too.