RAM: The Open Book

I awoke to my grandmother shaking me. She was standing by my bed with her coat on. It was not yet light out, but there she was. Wake up! We have to get dressed. You’re coming with me. What was happening? Such an odd morning already and the sun wasn’t even up yet. Your mother is having the baby. Your father took her to the hospital. I roll out of bed. Grandma goes out to the kitchen to make me something to eat. There’s a baby coming. I have just turned three.

Grandma and I get in the car and we drive out of town, down the well worn path between all things town and Grandma’s house. Main Street, over the Viaduct, up Center with a left just before Great Grandma’s house onto Ziegler, past the ball field, then out into the woods. We drove down the road that was not yet etched in my brain. I hadn’t been down this road enough in my short lifetime to know what lies ahead.

It is late spring and the morning is grey. The grass is up in tufts of green, but the trees were late in budding this year. Out in the country it will be wet and muddy. We drive on down the road.

Then, the car stops. Just stops. Grandma gets that wrinkled look on her face that comes when something is wrong. Ohhhhh … We drift to the side of the road and park. What now I wonder. This doesn’t look familiar. Grandma and I get out of the car. We have to find a phone. We go to the first house and walk through the gate in the fence. A woman comes out onto the porch and Grandma asks if we can use the phone. Sure, she says. But you have to get through the yard first. Grandma takes my hand and off we go down the path. And then they come. A herd of geese. Going after us like we were common thieves. Grandma and I ran screaming into the house, but not before we were nipped once or twice by the guardians of the yard.

And that was the day my sister was born.

It was many years ago that I met my friend. I was nineteen and he was twenty-four. We were going to art school in Pittsburgh, finding ourselves, discovering ourselves. My friend was older, he was wiser than I. I was wise beyond my years. The love we had for each other was never spoken, until the end, but throughout our lives it was proven by our actions. When we were young, we were inseparable, we thought our friendship would endure forever. Our eighties would be spent on a front porch somewhere, sitting in rocking chairs, smoking pipefulls of weed. The dreams of young people. The expectation that life will serve me and last for us.

Actually, I studied photography in Pittsburgh. I learned to see in that dirty little town. Through my camera lens I learned to see the difference between light and dark, black and white, contrasts in living and in everyday life. Full color meant full throttle and I was not yet there. I was green. I was young. My eyes were only beginning to open. I learned to watch and observe. I became a voyeur. I felt the seasons go by and paced them by the appearance and disappearance of the leaves on the trees. Click. I watched the flow of the rivers and the flames shoot to the sky from the few remaining steel mills that sat on their banks. I climbed its hills, walked its bridges. Click. I swung from the trees on rope swings. I studied the wildlife of the streets, watched the people coming and going, sitting and eating, young and old. Click. I explored abandoned buildings and thrift shops. I studied faces as they ate lunch at Jimmy Miller’s Bar. I watched snow fall. I found character in the faces of my fellow students. Click.

Other artists also lived and studied there.

Other artists also went on their way.