thescribblerboise-blog

[thescribblerboise-blog]

Barbeque

The street was old. So old it almost smelled like the moth cakes in Grandma's closet. In this neighborhood of old, cars were cast to the back of the property, properly hidden from the quaint calm of the street view. Indeed, the drive path to the garage was paved with stripes of lawn-concrete-lawn-concrete-lawn. Two strips of gray the width of a car's tire span from driver to passenger side. Here life still superseded the death dealt by modernity.

Palm trees were dispersed along the avenue, giving a tropical frost to the continuous lawn that swathed itself on either side, coloring the fronts of the set back unique homes. This was not the tropics, but the Hollywood neighborhoods of old. This was where the older generation mixed well with their progeny, not like the oil and water of current times.

The passenger door of any mobile device of yesteryear parked along the avenue in front of its pilot's home opened upon what was often a red brick welcoming mat, which continued its winding way to the front porch steps beyond the common walkway that connected one family to another along the breadth of the avenue. It was the welcoming aura of those that were important. Important people, family. Those of an individual kingdom whose power and wealth lay in the shared love and respect of blood ties generations old. Indeed, like the ancient cultures, each subsequent generation called back to its ancestors not only through the shared blood flowing in one's veins, but through the common and frequent gatherings. To share a toast to those who were only present in spirit through the hugs and kisses of those still bound to this life.

Once reached, the stairs lifted one off the common space of the families around the neighborhood into the sacred space of one's own family. In this particular neighborhood, for those still stuck at the height of an adult's hip, the front door was accompanied with another, smaller elongated flap of a door where messages from those dispersed - and also the callings from those who sought to collect their share of the man of the house's income - were dropped into a shallow oblivion. That oblivion, to the delight of the child, ended on the inside of the house, just on the other side of the door, in a cavern embedded in the wall - accessible only through yet another flap.

It is the mail drop that first fascinated the child. It was like nothing ever seen or experienced before. It was the storehouse of endless adventures of avatars of molded plastic and metal. A mere glance which assured the child of its enduring presence began the journey of a lifetime lived in a single evening of family visiting.

A knock. Open swung the door with the voice of second Aunts and Uncles issuing forth a welcoming of love and smiles. A bend at the waist of Auntie brought a kiss upon the cheek of a child, eyes meeting, melting souls one to another. Embarrassed, the child does not yet understand the mystical event. A simple kiss, a gentle swiping stroke of the elder's fingers and the momentary stare that suspended time and brought back ages past to join the two in a timeless embrace of blood ties.

The royal welcoming of youth immortalized, the adults exchange the same mystical bond that once held families together. The child scurries through the forest of age to the corner of the house where are hid the plastic and metal avatars once played with by the youth of a previous age. A box of mismatched toys bound by generations of whimsical fantasies and make believe worlds that are held only within the innocence of youth. Unbending yet flexible, imagination has seen its last.

Within the walls of the house one knew that where you were was within the framework of generational love. Even the furniture extended its greeting with a warmth known only to family. The worn curves of the chair's arms stroked ones own arm like a grandparent's gentle stroke of reassurance that all as okay and and you were safe in the world. One felt the embrace of preceding generations in the soft cushions of the couch, unique candies in dishes offering the sweetness of previous ages on the handcrafted coffee table.

Treasures in hand, the child scurries past the continual strokes of love hastened upon him by those of yesteryear. Out through the kitchen where, in an elongated pause, he stops to ponder yet another odd hole in the wall where once the happy produce of bovine held in glass were passed from white clothed men who drove milk trucks to the wife and mother and her icebox. A foreign practice to the child's own icebox where milk in plastic poured forth the white sea upon which his cereal navigated its way to his belly.

Back door opens onto a new landscape of trees dripping their wares. The child hesitates, turning his eyes to the east to gaze upon the crimson sacred fruit of his second Aunt's pride and joy - a lone pomegranate tree whose presence dominates the grove. To pick of this fruit is not forbidden, but the child knows the risk. Break open the hard red shell to feast on the Lord's bounty is to invite the eventual splatter of stain upon clothing and the look of "oh honey" from parents burdened with cleaning up that which cannot be erased. The child, however, in his cleverness, knows the strategy for success in almost any situation of this sort. He will "ask" for a pomegranate whereupon an adult will break open the treasure chest and offer up the spoils and, should the juice of the fruit expel itself upon the child, the child shall be free of blame and enjoy the sweet reward of his strategy.

In the beyond, behind the small grove, stands a white behemoth. A castle of fantasy. An endless bridge upon which his avatars shall travel on many adventures before the call of dinner and the familial, generational, breaking of sacred bread buttered by love disrupts the child's world and beckons him back to the here and now. Here stands the barbeque, where once great meals of meat and taters roasted an aroma of love and fellowship to the chatter in chairs just "this side" of the grove. Where ice clinked within glass confines and cigarette smoke swirled and mixed with the char broiled ember's persona and laughter backdrops the semi serious conversation of men folk - whose team will conquer whose and how will the market fair in the coming months and how is retirement and continued employment. Even to this child whose experience with and upon this great structure has always only been the dirt, dust and dried leaves that hide its once former status. The ghosts of family past linger and reach out, desirous to enjoin the child's fantasy play and become imbued with one of his avatars to once again know the intimacy long past of family ties. The child feels this within his core yet is not able to cognate its reality but only its importance.

The story unfolds with spontaneity  as the child climbs, engages, envelops and merges past, present and future. His present will once be his past and the past of the present will follow him, mold him, become him. This is the blood tie of family. This is the importance of closeness - physical and metaphysical - and respect, honor, and, above all, love for and of family.

The world in its current state now roasts upon the barbeque of fragility. A fragility borne from the ashes of the family unit now roasted to bitter end. The end of the nuclear family has ushered in the end of humanity. We are all lost on a sea of forgotten dreams. Dreams that held together the bonds of ancestors and present family, providing the strength and agility of mind and spirit to find its way through the muck and mire that life so easily casts upon its passengers. All gone. All forgotten. All, anymore, never having existed. Shame Love, shame God, and the shame is only upon us.

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