Pease Lane

I remembered how many times in my life I ran up the stairs and jumped into my parents bed, and I wondered if I’ll ever feel as safe as I did when I was nestled in this bed.  I wondered if I’d ever feel as loved as I did when I walked into this house.

For what it’s worth, the five of us, plus our new delightful addition, my baby nephew, have spent a lot time together this summer.  The bad times are sorely outweighed by the fond memories of Pease Lane, and it’s been a long time since our whole family gathered so much for dinner.

A storage bin full of report cards, essays, poems, and artwork serves as a lesson in one’s developmental psychology.  My brother, who’s dyslexia landed him special education for a short period wrote in every assignment, “I want to get better at reading.  I don’t want to be in special ed.”  My parents missed some red flags when he expressed his anger through his art, which at a young age, featured people cutting off people’s heads, alien abductions, flame throwers, and machine guns.  All the violence committed by laughing lunatics, like the goddamn joker.

Mitchell’s artwork (above) seems like something out of horror movie.

My artwork (below) often reflected my love for summer (that’s supposed to be the Robert Moses Bridge).

I had serious separation anxiety from a young age.  This excerpt appeared verbatim and in different variations: “I love my mommy.  I will never leave my mommy.  My mommy will never leave me.”  My brother and sister were better illustrators, so they had more artwork.  I was the straight A student, and the writer, so every report card and book report I aced were collected in this bin.  We threw most of it out, save for a few gems.

No tears were shed as we hugged good-bye.  In fact, my dad actually mocked my brother for getting “misty eyed” when reminiscing about Pease Lane.  Then, my parents drove off.  My brother and I went to my sisters house in our limbo, our baby nephew giggling and reminding us that life goes on, and it’s not so bad.  In an afternoon nap, I had a dream about the house with everything in it’s place, as it will be no more.

Looking back, at all the tears and laughter, the pool parties, the Christmas mornings, the kick the can games, snuggling with my mom watching tv, sledding, beach going, board games… it really does go so quick.  From my years at the nursing home, the one thing all the residents had in common is they always said, “it goes by too fast.”  We know it.  We’ve heard it.  And yet we continue to take our lives for granted, not going to the places or people we want to be with.

One time, my brother Mitch was at his friend’s house, and he landed on his head swinging from some tree swing and got a concussion.  He went to the hospital (we lived down the street from a hospital which proved valuable because we all had multiple serious hospital trips), and then he came home and we had plans to watch the live action Peter Pan movie (2003).  I guess we were waiting to watch it for some reason (maybe my dad left to get snacks?  I don’t remember exactly).  But Mitch asked, “are we gonna watch Peter Pan?” probably seven or eight times, with no recollection that he had just asked the same question.  At first it was alarming.  He’s not always going to be like this with the short term memory, right?  Then it became kind of funny, and we’d fuck with him knowing he’d forget what we just said.  After the seventh or eighth time is was straight up annoying and we were like, “damn it, yes, Mitch, yes we are watching Peter Pan.”  We were never known for our patience.

Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, was always one of my favorite stories.  For a long time, I thought of Mitch as a regular Peter Pan.  My parents are big kids themselves, and there was a time I was convinced it was them, they were Peter Pan.  But now, I think it’s me.  I think I’m the one who not only resisted growing up fully, but got hurt when other people did.

Amongst the debris of our past was an assignment I wrote in high school, senior year.  It was one of those “where do you see yourself in five years” papers.  I had to laugh when reading it, because it is quite possible I was even more cynical back then.  In the first couple paragraphs, I shit all over the assignment, openly mocking my teacher for her lack of creativity, saying no seventeen year old has any clue what they will become.  What was both tragic and funny is that I had decided to pursue journalism but I wrote, “that’s not what I really want to do.  What I really, really want to be, is a comedian on late night television.”  A younger yet more jaded version of me already gave up on my dream, and luckily I’d give up on abandoning it less than five years later.

My parents always dreamed of retiring in Florida, where they would never have to see another snowflake again.  Where they can enjoy all the hard work they put in for most of their lives.  Where, instead of putting other people’s needs before their own, they can finally do what they really want to do.  Pease Lane, where their kids jumped off the school bus to hug them, was no longer that place.  The house was just a shell of memories, and a constant reminder that the past gets further into the past as we age.  Neverland no more.

While they chase a dream down to Florida, I’ll continue to chase mine here in New York.  It is sad.  Endings are never happy.  But staying in one place is denying adventure.  Life would become a bore.  I couldn’t be prouder to say, my family has never been the type to shy away from a new adventure.  It’s the only way to live.  It’s the only way I’ve ever known how.