8:01 p.m. | 2004-11-20
How Strange It Is That The World Turns
My father and step-mother left for Puerto Rico on Tuesday. It's now Saturday. No one besides myself has been in this house in a few days.
But every time I find myself drifting off in thought I hear a kitchen chair pull out from the table. The familiar scrape of its legs on the floor which are my ceiling.
And each time I find myself getting in the shower I hear the garage door open and I hear a car pull in. The light buzz of my bathroom walls which are connected to the garage's.
And when I walk upstairs to do my laundry I swear I hear the tv click on and the leather recliner fold out. The springs locking into place a mere 10 feet from where I stand.
But no one is home.
I don't point this about because of ghosts or the like...it's more the familiarity of the situation. I've lived in this house I can tell you who's walking in the kitchen above me. I can even tell you which neighbor it is if one's up there. Vicky walks soft and on the fronts of her feet, so she never makes two sounds when she sets her foot down. My father scuffs, but lightly, and my step mother thumps a bit more, but unevenly.
I've been in and out of this room since I was 9. I've put 10 years into this room. Listening to the oven click on, the dryer stop, the laughter of a party. And it's all so familiar.
The smell changed when she came, though. When my step mother brought all of her strange smelling Mexican foods and her "traditional" music and the like. I started hearing new things. And I realized something as I was listening to the sounds.
Now that she's moved in...no one sits at the kitchen table. No one has scooted a chair out from there since the day she moved in. We're all relegated to the big dining room oak one. And my father, he doesn't park in the garage. In fact, she had so much stuff only I park in the garage. I couldn't have heard a car pull in or even heard that door opened in months. And worse...the black leather recliner. It's so soft and comfortable. It used to be my father's chair. You know, the man of the house. But now he sits on the couch because she wants him to.
Things aren't the same.
I swear I heard each and every one of these noises, and I relished hearing them later on because I realized that they were mirrors of my past. A past that's no longer reiterated in my daily life.
It's just a strange feeling I guess. I pull into the left side now, not the right (which was mine since I was 16), sleep on the North end not the South, cook my own meals instead of heading up for dinner. And it's not to say she's responsible it's just to say that I thought I was back at home. But really...
I have no idea where this is.
