So new and all
In the beginning of time when the world was so new and all
That's how I heard the first story I clearly recall, with my father's voice which was deep and crackly, it had a smell his voice, it had a warmness to it when he said those words. He said 'new and all' quickly, he said 'In the beginning of time' quickly, and the entire story weaved together so naturally until it came to the lazy camel that wouldn't work. And when the camel said Humphhh, my dad would make that noise we know from horses. And I would break out in laughter. My dad would laugh too, his teeth baring and his crackled voice covering my bedsent eyes with blurry, smiling sleep.
It is fascinating how certain memories become like so many pillows in our beds we reach for on instinct when we're asleep. How the feathers of those memories float miraculously out into the air and are left there for days until we pick them up and they have us once more running on the football pitch.
Running on the football pitch on an early and cold autumnal Saturday morning toward a boy who had no idea my parents had gotten divorced, god love him, had no idea I was upset at all when he had accepted the pass from his teammate, as I just leapt for him legs-first sliding over the dewy grass, my white shorts instantly drenched, my cleats cutting his ankle along with some dirt and both of us lying under cover of parents shrieking from the sidelines, looking up at the sky where clouds and an airplane played similar games, I heard the words again: In the beginning of time when the world was so new and all.
Sitting outside on a bench on the school playground looking at Lysette, who was moving to Belgium. She had blonde hair falling thin around her ears, she had a pale face that was so bright it made me scared, sitting right beside her in fact, as I said words I never said before and would never say again in precisely the same way: “I like you, do you want to go to Vanilla Sky with me tonight?” While the playground noises went from murderous to silent and the young trees planted in the park nearby leaned in to listen along with every pore of my nine-year-old face. Her thin beauty disguising a mystery I didn't understand but considered my deepest ally in combating the large loneliness of being exactly me at my age. And the trees dropped their leaves that year for us when she said yes and we saw Tom Cruise experience things we had little understanding of, as her hand circled mine in the cinema light and the words came again, In the beginning of time when the world was so new and all.
Looking for the first time in the eyes of Juna, my friend's first daughter, the first of our friends to have a child. Feeling Koen's enormous hand on my shoulder when my father got sick. Talking with Aalt outside my mother's house for the first time and for the first time truly feeling understood by the deep and confusing cosmic hyperspace of boyhood friendship. Hugging my sister when she cries. Tying your shoes baby. Cooking for parents. Singing in showers. Dancing in bedrooms. Cleaning with music. Holding hands. Walking in mountains with friends. Making coffee hungover with friends. Polishing bottles of wine with friends. Getting lost in Belgium with friends. Being alone but alive. Having no money but books. Producing a play on credit cards. Forgetting to stay in touch but loving you.
In the beginning of time when the world was so new and all
All those thoughts and memories become little more than laughter, and I want to tell you about laughter. Specifically about how when my dad read that story to me, with the voice of the Djinn of All Deserts, the voice of the Dog in French, the voice of the Ox in a sort of Eastern European dialect, the voice of the Horse in German and the voice of Rudyard Kipling himself, and the camel constantly Humphhhing, I laughed and he laughed at bedtime, and the world outside mattered as little as it does today. It's just you and me, and the stories we tell each other to help us sleep unfrowning amid the culminating pillows of memory that will eventually, comfortingly, smother us in the laughing end.