Soulparking

20 May 2006

I was sitting nervously beside my accountant as he was doing a quick tally and computation for my taxes for 2005.  Being that I live out of the country, I do not have to submit my taxes until June 15.   But in the middle of it, he turned to me and asked me this simple question: “What’s your address?  This one or that one?”  And with his finger he pointed to my parents address but then slid his finger to the Raleigh PO Box.

Suddenly, I realized I was no where. 

I am driving around Raleigh and Cary, North Carolina – and people ask me where I am from (except for the Chick-Fil-A on Harrison Avenue).  I tell them I am originally from here but I live in Africa.    Then I go through my Africa is amazing routine (which is true). 

But I remember how I got to Africa. 

I remember living in Germany.

I remember living here in North Carolina.   And then living in Boca Raton.  Earlier than that making my home in Atlanta.  But my home is Alabama.  Although I was born in Irvine, California.  And I cannot forget those four years living in Blakely, Georgia.

I am in limbo.  I am here in the United States but my heart is in Africa.  And I am positioning myself to move to Hong Kong in September. 

While I was on this trip, I met one of the girls I once babysat when I was eighteen years old and she was eleven.  Now she is twenty-five and I am thirty-two.  Very strange to see her all “grown up” and talking about “grown up” things.  It’s hard to also look at her because she is beautiful now – I feel like a dirty old man.  I still see her as that little girl who played with Hot Wheel cars and danced to Motownphilly over and over and over. 

As we hung out with her friends in Auburn and Atlanta, she told everyone that I taught her how to dance – and that’s why she is so good.  She is also the one that told me at eleven that I would look good if I got a body wave in my hair.  I didn’t know what a body wave was – so I went to the hairstylist and got one.  It was a perm.  I got a perm two weeks before my prom!  I ended up looking like Joe from New Kids on the Block.  

Funny the more life you live – the more your past seems like it was one big dream.  And it’s not until someone else reminds you of something else of your past that you had forgotten that you realize it wasn’t a dream.  Or when they recount the same story from a different angle.

She told me about the day I almost killed myself. 

And I had forgotten about that day.  It was so far in my past.  I was eighteen, broke, jobless, and no college planned.  I thought I would be trapped in Lafayette, Alabama fr the rest of my life. 

But when she started talking about it – I remembered one fact:  after I had taken the overdose of back pain medicine, I had driven to her family’s house (who I considered my second family) drugged.  I imagined myself sitting down to play Hot Wheels cars with her.  And suddenly, I would pass out and die.  I wanted to die with her and her family.  They were the last people I wanted to be with before I died.  I had forgotten that.

She laughed when I told her.  “God, I was eleven!  I would have had to go through therapy for the rest of my life if you would have done that…” 

I laughed too but then I looked at her.  And suddenly I wasn’t in limbo anymore.  I was home and I remembered that instant – that place in my memory – when it was true.  I wanted my last moments to be playing Hot Wheels cars with her.