A solitary road sat empty, safe for a few worn townhouses that convened there overlooking a sewage run-off and stream. Or at least I think they did. I remember a park nearby, a stone park as I used to call it, where I would run and play amongst the names that kept me company. My brother would always walk me there. He’d bike on ahead and I’d come trailing after him, skidding my feet and crying. I remember the color green, surrounding me through the grass and weeds, decorating the sidewalks, and guiding my way to the stones. He’d tease me incessantly that he would leave me there, though he never did. He would always turn back to keep a close eye - the ever-present guide he once promised our parents he would be. I remember not wanting to be alone.
My whole world zoomed in on a particular townhome. It was narrow, held by those around it, with a dilapidated porch and weathered brick walls. I remember the color yellow associated here, like the summer storms that sent alarms sounding throughout the town. The main door opened to a tiny living room, a staircase on the right where I learned to paint my toenails for the first time, a small television next to it where my brother tormented me with the movie Signs. The kitchen in the back, long and thin, where I’d beg for ice cream sandwiches when the weather ran warm. I could see the red glow through the single-pane window indicating Dad’s car backing into the driveway. In the corner of that kitchen was a door to the haunted basement. Not haunted in the same way as the stone park, but haunted by much more demanding ghosts. I avoided that door, that cellar full of mementos and souvenirs from times gone by, it always taunted me. The fear emanating from it was only ever disrupted by the red glow through that single-pane window in the kitchen. Nearly every day at the same time, its rays would fill the house. Whenever I saw it, I’d scream “Red daddy!” and run outside, barefoot, leaping over the
dandelions to find the glow placing a spotlight on him bringing in the groceries. That spotlight provided as much as he did: a warm glow of energy to the home. You could see it from the living room where my favorite purple couch caught me, where my father’s painting hung above.
My father was a painter, a musician, a ceramicist, a filmmaker, and provider.
Raised in a town of 3000, in many ways, his life was ordinary. He got average grades, was beaten to a pulp in the high school football team, and volunteered for his family’s church (though the nuns scared him). The strangest part about his childhood was his loving, science-driven, Jesus-loving parents who nurtured his oddity through the arts. He was a talented drummer, raised amongst the glamour of the 70’s rock scene. His father taught him to paint, like his father before him, and his brother fueled his need to film. His happiest memories rendered him and his brother in the back of their childhood home. Dad would be on the ground, pointing an old film camera up to the roof of their house where Uncle Mike would be, standing in all his glory. In a town of 3000, I always imagined that this was the strongest they felt. They owned the world in those cameras, performing their own stunts, and composing worlds they could escape into. Their parents, calling them in for dinner, would review their film and tell them how creative they are. Dad and Mike would surely spend the rest of the night plotting what would play out next. I know now that when Dad watches a film, he thinks of Mike. He was never quite the same after he died.
I remember very few details of that painting that hung above our couch. He had painted it in his senior year of college, (I think). Freshly made a father and brought upon the dreaded decision to pursue security for the sake of his family. It was all that remained of that past life, its presence alluding to those brief dreams inevitably washed away with turpentine. Those fleeting thoughts that he’d leave that small town for something more. Large in scale, you could feel its
gaze upon you from any angle of the room. A band was in full swing, music and harmonies dancing across the canvas as if you could hear them too. In the center, a man passionately played the trombone, with bubbles floating in and out, reflecting the dim lights of the club they commanded. Some days. I could see them floating right off the canvas, floating around my favorite purple couch, encircling me in that small townhouse living room. The image always ticked me. It emphasized the whimsy of my father and his never-ending visions of what the world could be.
When we lived there, I spent most nights listening. I would hear the occasional car meander by, the whizzing of phone wires and street lights outside, the crashing sounds of my brother’s video games muffled through his door upstairs, and my parents’ consistant yelling in their bedroom. I remember how vivid their arguments would sound. They reminded me of the stage plays mom would choreograph at the local theater, or the sword fights my brother would perform at the Renaissance faire. It was as if Shakespeare himself had directed them to use the evening as a rehearsal. When the post-glow happiness would wear off, the blue of the night would bring about anger. I liked to imagine them in costumes when I heard them, I think it made the blue of the night more bearable to endure. Puff-sleeved and crying.
I would take up playing in the living room when that happened. A rented Pokemon VHS would be musing on the tiny television, my three favorite baby blankets spread meticulously on the floor, and my stuffies lined neatly in a row. They were preparing for a play too, only this one I could control. Sometimes, pausing between make-believe daydreams of my own, called to its vibrant purples and blues, to the glistening thick texture of the paint, I would immerse myself into the scene looming above me. Maybe Mom and Dad’s arguments weren’t a Shakespearean play, maybe they were a song. Just as the purples and blues sang of a melancholic night that no
longer existed, so did their arguments about what might have once been love. The painting was almost a comfort show to me. I knew it the same way it knew me.
When mom would inevitably storm out, loudly proclaiming that she needed to walk it off, Dad would saunter down the stairs in defeat. There was no winning with Mom. The red glow would always be gone from his eyes. I always wondered, in moments like that, if he ever looked at the one with the bubbles and thought of those dreams he had given up. If he ever looked at me and thought the same. He wouldn’t say much about their production, he would instead sit on that purple couch that comforted me, and ask about my stuffies lined neatly in a row, about the rented Pokemon VHS, or if I wanted an ice cream sandwich. The image would stay with me much into adulthood: An artist and provider held by his surroundings, backdropped with his whimsical visions of the world, with music surrounding him. While most of the home was dictated by my mother, he had at least one part of him shown. It represented him well: that despite his selflessness in everything he did, his creativity would persist through it all. He wasn’t a man who gave up his dreams of being an artist so we could survive - he was a man who thrived because he saw bubbles coming from trombones.
If I had to describe that time I could say that it was a glowing red. But whenever I look back all I see is purple.