Snapshots

At the Kitchen Table

It's late at night when somebody finds the photos in the back of a kitchen drawer. Most of them aren't worth the time it takes to explain them (and a few I snatch up before anyone tries). But some have stories. Clear a spot on the kitchen table (or wipe up the condensation), and we'll take them one at a time. (Interesting, someone says, how much photos have to say about their photographers. I pretend not to hear.)

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KC Masterpiece (Jim)

Appearing for karaoke every night (they told me), Jim was a big, smiling man with Down’s syndrome, wearing an immense Kansas City Chiefs jersey. He must have shaken half the women’s hands on his way to the machine, where he sang “New York, NY” (with some of the words but all of the heart). On his way back up to inspired applause, he visited with the rest of the women, table by table, and shook their hands, too.

DJ Zeek

Zeek lost his car and his overnight freedom to DUIs but entertained my kids with incomprehensibly-clean freestyle rap and storytelling as we drove him "home" to prison, always ending the session with, "Remember kids, this is what happens when you drink & drive."

Bagger Jan

Jan was a kitchen staffer at my college dorm when I worked food service with her. She called me "College Boy" as though I might be useful as a paperweight someday, but taught me how to snug-tie a plastic bag to a garbage can, prefacing it with, "Let me show you something useful…"

Jennifer Lee

Jenny flew Deep South like a mockingbird after high school graduation to rediscover her roots. Every day, on her way to work just outside Atlanta, she passed an elderly man, walking slowly along the road. One day, she stopped to walk with him and hear his story. It was not quite a mile, she wrote to me.

Steve's Voices

Steve's inner collegiate demons would see him ripping up Boulder Canyon in his old Audi, seatbeltless, radio station blasting songs he hoped would guide him in his desperation. "God's in the lyrics," he told me one time back at the dorm, exhausted. He never revealed what he’d learned.

Advil Girls

The Varsity soccer team I coached years ago held nothing back, went body on body at speed, waived off substitution, argued with everyone, gained a scrappy rep, and let me in on their mystical gender-kept secret: Advil. 

People's Fair Ted

Ted, who was filthy and smelled of vodka sweat, approached us at the Capitol Hill People's Fair. My two kids were still at hand-holding ages and hadn’t learned to avoid eye-contact, so they greeted him. Rather than hitting us up for change, though, Ted talked to them about the weather and his own family before politely turning, taking two steps back and vomiting on the grass well out of range. “Excuse me,” he told us and moved on.

Alex the Arbiter

It was one of those moments when you forget who and what you are and just express yourself. I was experiencing a frustrating home improvement moment, and I said,  "F--k this house!" as my 3-yr-old son came around the corner. He got a thinking look on his face, and before I could explain, he said, "No, Dad, it's a Love house."


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Afterthoughts

A few of the Snapshots deserve some updating.

Recently, I found Steve on Facebook. I still remember him telling me about the drunken canyon drives. Sometimes I could tell when he was leaving for a binge up the canyon, confused & reckless. Although I tried to divert him at first, I just had to let it happen eventually. In that way, he forced me to find a little backhanded faith of my own. His Facebook page shows him in the cockpit of his own private plane. I suspect there's a decent sound system in there.

Jenny was always a Southerner (with her rounded accent & thick makeup), although she took pains to tell everyone she wasn't. Just before graduating, though, she came in to tell me about this wonderful plan to go back to Georgia, where she'd been raised "long ago." It surprised me, because she had always made fun of how backwoodsy  Southerners seemed to her. Now, without being able to explain it fully, she was as enthusiastic as anyone who's ever left one life for the promise of another. When her letters started coming in—including the Mile in My Shoes one—they were full of her eye for detail and reverence for the littlest signs of life (although she still referred to people outside of Atlanta as hicks). The letters dwindled over time, as they should, but I have to raise the glass to Jenny (with eyes wide open). Maybe I'll use Southern Comfort.

I'm pretty sure Zeek is dead now. I finally accepted an invitation to one of his parties: music without dancing, collecting without conversation, and a mysterious migrating punch bowl of pills, some of which I recognized, unfortunately. Here came Zeek, yelling, "Dan the Man!" I knew he had diabetes, and when we were through with one of the many versions of that hug thing, I noticed he was was halfway through a beer. Just then, he wavered briefly—like a Looney Toon's character that hasn't discovered he's run out of land—then dropped hard to the floor. That was how he lived in general: huge & personal, then buried under his own mistakes. He had respect for life, I guarantee, just not necessarily his own; and the worst part about it, like any tragedy, is that he knew it.

But these are all just photos from a drawer. Best shared when rediscovered. Then back they go.