The boy with the blond hair poking out from the dirty baseball cap grabbed his mitt and ambled across the lawn, then crossed the street.
“Where you going?” I called after Timmy.
“To the school.” He turned enough to catch my face, then he skipped onto the sidewalk.
“Wait! I’m coming!’ The screen door slammed behind me as I ran to my bike, yanking it out of its brief rest and kicking the pedals forward.
When we got to the field, we naturally separated. Boys did boy stuff, and sometimes a girl could tag along. It all depends. Certain things got you kicked out right away, like crying. And there were other things too. I couldn’t make real machine gun sounds or whistle loud, which all seemed to revolve around a lot of spit. But I could climb, jump and run as fast as any boy. And ride with no hands.
In my mind, the playing fields and playground behind our elementary school were large, like Kansas. Kites flew, packs of dogs wove between kids playing kickball. Tucked over to the side were basketball courts, perfect for Hopscotch if you had a stick of chalk and a good flat stone. And way over behind the playground stood “the Wall,” a shaded stone wall inhabited by teenagers before and after school, who flirted and smoked their parents’ cigarettes.
Timmy found a couple of friends to pitch to, and I watched from a distance, on the swings, pumping my grass-stained legs like a maniac, the chains jerking as I swung down from the sky. I could see him; he was there, so alive, a beautiful boy with deep blue eyes that always found me, with the sun-splattered freckles over his nose. A body that seemed to dance across the field, then arch in mid-air, dusty old mitt open like a leather maw, scooping high flies out of the summer air.
The boy’s body lay still and pale on a stretcher just a few weeks later. It was 1964. What could they do? The heart hidden from view, grew larger and grew tired until one day at summer camp, it stopped. I looked for his eyes, his shadow, the familiar place I sheltered in, but my big brother had vanished.
They buried him while I was at Playland, a large amusement park nearby with a family that didn’t like me. At least their daughter didn’t and I didn’t like her either. It felt odd, smiling all day, all of us. I was eight years old, and I knew it was fake – the screams above the rattle of the roller coaster, the thick cotton candy air mixed with cigarettes. Back home, everyone seemed to tiptoe, death had changed it all. Silence choked the last notes of laughter until there was not even a whisper, a last breath. No one looked at each other. My home was pulseless and gray and more than once I longed for the clamor and chaos of Playland.
Most evenings, we piled into the station wagon, and my father drove us to the cemetery, looking out his window as we rolled past the old crooked stones, the car strangely quiet with four kids in the back. My mother’s hands planted things, moving swiftly through the dirt, caressing the leaves and murmuring as I watched from a tree. Dad just stood there with his hands in his pockets, his head cocked, with a puzzled look as he stared down at the new stone. I could read – Timothy, his proper name. And even though the hole was filled with fresh dirt, I knew he wasn’t there. But where?
I liked the sound of the stone hitting the cement court and the smell of chalk in the summer heat. You can play hopscotch alone, you can swing on a swing alone, but the ride up to the field felt longer after Tim died.
A few years later, I smoked and flirted at the Wall. I think I was relieved I didn’t have to play anymore. It had become complicated. After Tim died, growing up was like getting on the highway and passing strange towns. Nothing was familiar. My mother brought me to piano and oil painting lessons, places of merging my silent pain within measures and notes and the smell of linseed oil, and although there was some healing in Bach and a puddle of burnt umber, I couldn’t trust it. People were people – there, and then just shadows. I saw the vanity of all things at a young age, which produced a robust cynicism and loose morals. I don’t think I grieved my brother’s death. Too many other things were lost with him, buried in the rubble.
So I ran, the Hound of heaven close behind. I ran through psyche wards and subway stations and bars called the Bomb Shelter. I leapt over the abandoned slums of Once Was, over a child’s easel and spilt poetry, tumbling to the edge of Nothing Left to Lose. Now I know You were there, but almost breathless. Jesus loves a good challenge.
Timmy would be 70 today, and I’d probably call him Tim, and he would call me Robin, instead of Birdie, my name for the first decade of my life. But I can’t see him as an old man, even though he is my big brother. I see him leaping and spinning – maybe he can fly now. Someday, the curtain will be pulled back for me and Jesus will say, “Now!” Everything, play and colors and the songs we sing will be way beyond the best that I’ve imagined – it will be perfect! I will be expected. And I will be complete.
But for now, I remember the boy in the baseball cap, jaunty and wise, with playful sad eyes, catching the high fly, catching the love in God’s eyes, while I swing high as I could go without touching heaven, without going with you, Timmy, one last time.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Revelation 21:4
