My blood is a time capsule
When I was a little kid and my parents where out of the house, I used to look through their drawers. I was searching for them in the trinkets they kept. I was facinated with the idea of my parents as people. I would make up stories about their alternate lives based on what I found. Nunchucks, a remnant of the karate class in which she met my father, made my mom a super secret ninja hero. Newspaper clippings of people lost in the woods, Navy SEALs on the beach, such-and-such has recieved a metal, so and so has died turned my father into a hitman on the run. The fact that we moved so often helped. As I got older these stories turned into jokes I told my friends. Sarcastic explainations for personality flaws inherited from my parental units.
I am currently home from college for spring break. Today I was looking through our old photo albums my mom has manically and painstakingly arranged, each album containing a year of our lives, all labeled 1986-1988, 1989, 1990, 1991…behind the albums in the cabinet where they are kept I noticed a few boxes that I had never seen before.
The first, a blue tin. At one point it held a 21 piece rachet socket set, now it is covered with a large “GO NAVY” sticker. Inside are a million little peices of my father. It all smells like engine grease and old paper, a smell I strongly associate with my dad. A passport expired in 1989. A faded photo of my father as a child in 1974. An invitation to the Naval Amphibious School, Coronodo, graduation ceremony for the 119th class of the Basic Underwater Demolition Seal Training sent to my grandparents. Pink carbon copies of the papers on which my dad signed his life away on, his entry papers, contracts with the US Navy. A photo of Chandi, the rottweiler that was hit by a car before I was born, my dads favorite pet. An evaluation sheet that states he is excellent with punches, kicks, technique and and power but he needs to “increase his enthusiasm”. Add to this two dozen patches from all different branches of the navy, and police patches from 4 different states.
Next to the blue tin there is a plastic ziplock bag, holding photos, letters, envolopes and what look like varsity letters. More paches for Underwater Demolition Team 21, which hasn’t existed since 1985 when it became SEAL Team 5. Photos of my mother, god she must be 18 or 19, smiling, sitting on grass in a backyard in a bathing suit. Polaroids of my dad in midair at what must be a kickboxing tournament. Pictures of my grandfather as a little boy standing in the snow with various dead animals are nearly indistinquishable from hunting photos that where taken of my dad’s first kills. In fact, my dad and my grandfather look so much alike in the photos of them as young men I used to get them confused. Black and white photos of my great grandparents and relatives of mine who where dead long before I was born. A picture of a graveyard where every stone has my last name on it.
A photo of my dad as a young man sitting shirtless at a desk smiling. On the back of this photo it says “Pusan, South Korea, October 1989”. I was three, my brother was a month old. My father walks out of his office and watches me look at these things over my shoulder. When I get to this photo he smiles and takes it from me, pointing to the items sitting on the desk.
“I was coloring you a picture.” he says. I can just barely make out in the photograph a Jetsons coloring book sitting on the desk next the letter he is writing my mother.
It is strange, but as with most things, as I get older I understand my parents both more and less. I am 19. When my dad was 19 he was in BUDS, my mom was at Johnson State College. A year later she gave birth to me. They were children. It makes me want to congradulate them on not completely messing me up, and at the same time it kind of makes me want to grab my mother and shake her screaming “What, where you crazy?!”.
I pack everything back into the cuboard and sit down for dinner with my family.