Unlost

For Car & Nono

The phone rings on the couch. I look, Mad (actually it says, “GP.” I changed her contact because of the giant cat tattoo she just got on her thigh.)

“Hey you,” I say as the line connects.

“Let me tell you what your nephews did today,” she says.

This is a trademark phrase in our family reserved for the dumbass of the day, let me tell you what your mother has done, etc.

I smile, “Tell me.”

“Well, Nono and Car were getting ready to leave with their dad. You know, Nono’s Birthday is Wednesday?” she asks.

“I know,” I answer nodding my head and rolling my eyes. “6 years of angry red,” I laugh.

“Anyway,” she continues, “so they’re getting ready to go, and Nono just sits down in the gray chair in the hall. I looked at him and said, ‘Buddy are you all right?’ Then he just threw back his head like Charlie Brown and cried, ‘I miss the boy! And he isn’t coming to my Birthday!’

(My heart sank a little on that one.)

“I mean, Trey, I was taken aback. He doesn’t get emotional like that. And then you know what happened?,” she asks.

“What?”

“Car just looked at him so calmly and said, ‘It’s okay Nono. The boy used to come, but he doesn’t now. All the people who love you will be there.’”

I grin.

“I was so proud of him! My wise almost nine-year-old.”

“He’s so smart,” I say.

In fairness to the boy—the jury’s out on whether that’s deserved, but to quote Momma, “Trey what if we all got what we deserved? (pause) None of us would be doin’ too good”—none of this was about not loving them. I’ll make sure they know that someday.

It’s all so much more than you think when you’re dreaming of your life—

It’s more than just a first date in Piedmont Park, behind the tennis courts, in the bend by the lake, where you pack a picnic, and kiss for the first time—

I guess sometimes, your compass breaks.

Or maybe it’s like those divers that can’t tell which is up and which is down in the cold and deep.

You’re just

lost.

But then someday you go for a run through downtown.

And you move the white modern chair that lived in the guest room into the living room.

And you buy Monsteras, and bird’s nest ferns, and a struggling lime maranta to fill the voids where the other plants lived—

Because as it turns out, you do love plants.

(Especially the pencil cactus you cleverly named, 2. The one your friend Red gave you.)

And you cook for friends, and you drink champagne, and you kiss new boys, and you play slow country music that you dance alone to in the kitchen, and you write, and you fill the house with laughter again.

And you cry a little less—

And you find maybe more courage than you remember having before all this—

And you walk up and down,

And down and up West Peachtree St.

And you smile through the changing seasons of the A.

And you write.

And you write.

And you write.

And then one day you find—

You still don’t know where you’re headed.

But you aren’t lost anymore.

And you aren’t so afraid.