There was this boy, a man, early college age or something and beautiful lying on my bedroom floor smiling ten years ago and I cannot remember a single thing about this moment in this candid snapshot on my phone.
The moment she found him at the baggage conveyor belt four years after high school graduation, standing with the other passengers from Arizona, it was like she’d found a new life written across his face. They’d never been friends, but after she re-introduced herself, he seemed to want to talk.
I have the date; it’s embedded in the metadata of the photo, so I know it was taken during the beginning of my junior year college break. I was going home to work. This low-light photo is maybe a week after school would have ended. I don’t know. I don’t have my flight emails anymore or my date book.
He told her today was the date to end all dates: he’d just graduated ROTC from Arizona State and was now eligible for active duty as soon as they wanted him. She’d flown in from college in Memphis and without thinking asked him if he’d like to catch up. Maybe they could work out together. She didn’t know why she told him, and she felt a little out of control of herself while doing it, that she subscribed to an online community that posted videos of people saving each other’s lives. Some of them were soldiers, she told him. They could watch it together. It’s great, she said. He told her that he believed her and took her contact card. She hadn’t thought he’d show up, but the next day he appeared at noon in her open garage door. Wanna lift a little, he asked.
I didn’t think anything of it, and now I have nothing to think. I’m so deflated by the lack of answers. Who was I only ten years ago, focusing in on this guy in my room? He’s half dressed in workout shorts and a tank, sweaty in my computer’s light.
She felt she could lift any weight. When it was her turn to spot him, and the bar was too light, his smile wasn’t off-putting. When they finished lifting, he said, let’s watch your videos. She kept her bedroom dim, a navy blackout curtain over the window. They laid on the floor, him absentmindedly squeezing his arms to feel his workout. They watched the videos on her laptop. First came the military versions, the medivac liftoffs, the water rescues, lashing sheets of propeller wash. Boyishly, he yelled hooah at her laptop with each rescue, the soldiers bulky with their outfits and weapons and rope.
It’s dim in my room, but the time stamp on the photo says around 12:30 pm, so I must have pulled my blackout blinds. I’m not using a flash. The angle looks surreptitious. Who was I? Who was he?
Then came the videos she liked, the crowds coming to the aid of the lame, the blind, motocross wipeouts, fire ladder heroics, rickshaw accidents, flood lifelines, seven billion brothers and sisters. She thought there was nothing not to like, unless you don’t like kindness. She wanted to watch him watching the videos to see if there was any indication of the same appreciation in his face, but she had laid down too close to his body, and she wouldn’t be able to turn her head without him noticing. So, she pretended to read something on her phone, the blue computer light bathing his face. At that moment, he reached for the laptop and typed a web address. Watch this guy, he said. She took the photo.
This had been a search and destroy mission for old, weird, random, whatever shots that I don't want my kids seeing one day. I want to leave them as much clarity as I can before my condition worsens.
They lifted together here and there for the next month, until he got the call to leave that he'd told her about at the baggage claim carousel. She followed him on social media until a yellow ribbon appeared on his profile icon one day that Spring, when she was back at school, and she was in a hurry and couldn't bear to look and pressed archive, hard.
My girls haven't built so many memories as the luckiest of us. I left the photo of the workout stranger boy. He seems happy. I’m amused by the possibility that they'll think mom had a really cute summer boyfriend. Maybe they'll look him up. It can be a mystery dear old mom left for them. Maybe they'll make their own memories of the photo for me. Maybe that’s how it should go.