The Boots My Mother Gave Me (19 page)

She hugged him, grinning from ear to ear, “Fanks, Grampy.” She returned to my lap, eating her cookies.

“I’m on to you, Grampy,” Kat called, returning from the other room. She swatted him lightly as he passed her by, heading outside to smoke a cigarette. He chuckled. Imagine that, our dad going outside to smoke a cigarette.

While we were growing up, he smoked like a freight train inside, outside, wherever he wanted. After all, it was his
goddamn
house, even though Mom had a terrible disdain for the yellow hue it left on everything. She scrubbed the walls with bleach, no less, to get rid of the grime. He smoked outside now because second-hand smoke wasn’t good for Megan. I watched in awe at the tableaux of our family, like a regular Norman Rockwell painting. I chuckled to myself, shaking my head in pleasant disbelief.

“Harley, I just think you need a career, something with a reliable income, insurance, and retirement. You’ve changed your major how many times now? I don’t like to see you chasing dreams that may never come true,” Mom continued, putting a pot of potatoes on the stove to boil.

“Ma, I’ve only changed my major twice. I’m a few credits shy of my Bachelor’s in broadcasting. I can get that done in two semesters,” I said. “Besides, the name on my student loans reads Harley LeBeau. That means Harley LeBeau gets to pick the major. I know you guys helped with the first semester, and I thank you, but I would also thank you for letting me live my own life.”

“Probably brings back memories doesn’t it, Gram?” Kat asked. “I’ll bet you had the same conversation with Mom back in the day.” She took a seat at the table.

“No, she did not,” Mom interjected, disappointment in her tone.

“No. I didn’t pressure my children. I was happy as long as they were happy and healthy. Times were different back then, the opportunities, especially for women,” Gram emphasized.

“I’m only saying, you’ve been at it four years, Harley. Don’t you think if it were going to happen, it would have? The music, the acting, or whatever else you’ve dipped into. I think it’s good to dream, but you need to be realistic, too.”

“Ma?” Kat scolded. “You can’t just go to school, major in songwriting, and then poof, you’re a songwriter. It’s all about the right place and time.”

“Thanks, Kit-Kat,” I said. I could always rely on her to have my back.

And thank you, oh wise woman of the world,
my first sarcastic thought coming to mind. I couldn’t say that though, not to my mother. She didn’t leave Georgia. She never dared to dream, to take risks, or venture out into the world. Life led her. She never took charge of her life, at least attempting to make it what she wanted it to be. Yet she proposed to know how I should live mine.

Bite your tongue, Harley.
Picking Megan up in one arm and the bowl of green beans in the other, I walked to the counter, setting Megan on top of it. I wiped the chocolate from her mouth with the dishtowel and poured her some juice.

“Fank you, Aunt Harwey.” She smiled, clapping her hands.

I smiled back at her, cute as she could be. Her face made my heart happy. “You’re welcome, sweet thing,” I said, reminded of the promise of life and all its possibilities with her image, young, naive, and simply ecstatic to have a cup of juice after a few chocolate chip cookies.

So basic and wise, children, finding happiness in the smallest things life has to offer. I picked her up, carrying her on my hip. “Well, I’m realistic about the fact I’m hungry,” I said playfully, diverting further confrontation about my life and my choices.

“It’ll be ready in a few minutes. Here, have a deviled egg to tide you over,” Mom offered, unable to permit anyone going hungry in her kitchen.

I bit into the egg after giving Megan a sample. “Hmm, its good, Ma.” I kissed her on the cheek.

“Well, I just think it’s great, you girls and all your hopes and dreams,” Gram said. “Who would have ever thought I’d have such talented grandchildren. I say go for it, all of it.”

Dad returned to the kitchen, his guitar and mine in tow. “How about a little entertainment before dinner,” he suggested. I obliged, we all did, simply beside ourselves in the presence of his revolutionary change. It’s amazing, really, how the good in people can virtually cause us to ignore the bad, as we nurture the perpetual desire within each of us to believe in the humanity in the ones we love.

U
pon Benny’s request, I escorted his wife and him to New York City. He paid his respects to the fire department after 9/11. A few lives lost that day were second-generation firefighters, sons and daughters of men Benny served with before his own retirement. A somber scene, New York was very different from the city I experienced years prior with the fashion company.

During my time there with Benny, witnessing the destruction, loss, and heartbreak in the lives of others, I felt compelled to do something. The past four years of my life revolved around me, completely self-serving and indulgent. If ever there was a time to give back, to make a difference, this was it.

With no exact idea how to help, I joined a volunteer service in the city, Angels of Mercy. Blood, an essential for human life, remained in great demand, and that’s where my volunteer efforts began. After a few weeks of training, I joined the ranks of so-called medical vampires, phlebotomists. Although a bit unsettling initially, I stuck needles into human flesh, veins, something I never imagined myself doing. But it proved the most rewarding work to that point in my life.

It got me thinking; maybe Mom was right. Maybe I did need to evaluate my life and do something concrete with it, a means to a happy, comfortable ending.

I prided myself on living in the moment, going where the wind took me, and following my instincts, no matter how unconventional. Where exactly had that lead? What did I have to show for my life, besides numerous disconnected experiences, people I met, places I saw, and things acquired along the way? What had I really accomplished? I had a bank account with minimal funds, college debt with no actual degree nor career, a notebook of songs, none of them published, and an endless stream of ideas and notions left unfulfilled. Maybe I should try Mom’s way, rational and realistic.

I trudged along to the New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, wearing my mother’s boots, the first time I put them on since boxing them up in Nashville, two years ago. I signed up for the associate nursing curriculum. With my current college credits, I was looking at one year of classes, to include a heavily intense hospital clinical load, before I would be eligible to sit for the state boards for my nursing license. One year, that seemed like forever in my vocabulary.

I wore Mom’s boots every single day, as a reminder to stay on track. Without them, the imprint of her feet literally leading my path, guiding me every step of the way, I never would have made it through that year. If left to my own devices, I would have easily bounded off for another place, another town, and a new experience. I had to do this, at least give it a try, the ideal life. Mom couldn’t have been more proud.

I worked at a hospital in the city in the intensive care unit. Intensive care was as its name implies, intense. The technical aspects of the job, coupled with the mental and physical demands, proved challenging but I could handle them. What I found extremely difficult to manage, the ethical dilemmas, the emotional attachments, and the constant threat of mortality.

Patients and their families, all ages, ethnicities, and genders, found themselves in extreme circumstances. It was impossible not to become attached, not to empathize, another constant reminder that life is too short not to dream. I saw patients as young as three years old with burns over eighty-five percent of their bodies, teenagers paralyzed from some random, tragic accident, never to walk again, healthy adults unable to perform daily activities such as brushing their teeth, the after effects of a spontaneous stroke, elders kept alive by machines, because their loved ones couldn’t bear to let them go. Every patient etched a memory, their eyes, so appropriately called the window to the soul, haunted me.

Detachment, a coping mechanism, albeit classified as negative, a tool I came to know and use in my relationship with my father, now became inevitable in my career. You come to a place where repeated exposure ceases to faze you, and you grow comfortably numb.

I often found myself thinking about Jeremiah, wondering how he was, how he handled war day in and day out. How did he cope? Who did he go to when he needed a soft place to fall? Was he still alive?

Even though I found the job quite difficult, it was rewarding, at times, and I couldn’t quit. I must make this ideal life
thing
work. I had a regular paycheck, insurance, and even a 401K. If all of that made one successful, then why did I feel like such a failure?

I continued writing songs, poems, whatever came out of me. With the emotional stresses of the job and a deep-seated feeling of discontent, without some form of creative release, I would have gone mad. I played a few gigs here and there when time allowed, nothing substantial, just a few local spots. I remained an amateur, at best.

Late November 2002, the weekend after Thanksgiving, I played the early set at
Sal’s Ristorante,
down the street from my apartment in Brooklyn. Midway through my set, a man came from the dining area into the bar, unaccompanied. He sat down at the front of the room, taking the closest seat to the stage, purposefully watching me, a bit unnerving really.

My first impression did not flatter, as he sat in his designer suit, perfectly polished shoes, not a hair out of place. Surely, he was fully manicured from his hands to his feet. Entirely too pretty and completely entitled, he just kept staring at me, smiling every now and then as I continued my set. In the middle of a song I grew uncomfortable singing in front of him, as I had written it with Jeremiah in mind:

I know you’re hurt, babe,

It’s all right, you see.

You don’t have to be tough,

When you’re lying here with me.

I’ll be your warm place,

When the nights get cold.

Share it with me, baby,

And let it all unfold.

Let me go down,

To that place inside your soul.

Feel me all around you,

Until you don’t wanna let go.

Let me wake you in the morning,

Baby, can’t you see.

Let me show you,

How it’s supposed to be.

Finally,
I exalted, as the song came to an end, relinquishing me to my fifteen-minute break. I put my guitar down and walked offstage. His eyes followed me, continuing to make me uncomfortable. I couldn’t take it.

I marched up to his table. “Hey,
Pretty Boy,
could you lay off the staring?”

“Pretty boy? That implies you think I’m attractive,” he said with a million-dollar smile, leaning over the table, placing himself closer to me. “I’ll lay off the staring, if you
let me
take you out,” he played on the words to my song.

I leaned closer still to him, meeting the imposition of his body language, my hands now resting boldly on his table. “That implies you think I’m the bargaining type.” I sarcastically returned his million-dollar smile. “I’m not. Stare all you want,” I challenged, walking away.

I finished the rest of my set, before packing up and carrying my stuff to the parking lot to load up Charlene. Usually I left her in the garage, as driving in the city proved inefficient, however it was the first really cold night of the season, and I wanted to warm her up.

Apparently, in my lack of driving while living in the city, I had forgotten how to turn my headlights off, as they beamed brightly upon my return to the parking lot. Cursing myself, I hurriedly put my guitar into the passenger seat, as the snow fell around me. Running to the driver’s side, I closed myself in, rubbing my hands together, attempting to generate heat. Hopeful as I turned the key,
maybe she’ll start.
She acted like she wanted to, the sound of her engine attempting to pull, but she wouldn’t roll over.

Trying again, “Come on, baby,” I encouraged. Still nothing. I grabbed my flashlight from under the seat and got out of the car, slamming the door behind me as I kicked the tire.
Sorry, Charlene,
I apologized in my mind. “Shit, shit, shit,” I stammered, slapping my hands on the hood, propping it up, as I heard someone walking up behind me. I spun around quickly, shining the flashlight on him.

“Do you need a jump?”
Pretty Boy
offered.

“No. Thank you, I’ve got it handled.”

“I’ll pull my car around.” He hurriedly made his way to the other end of the parking lot.

“Really, I’ve got it,” I called after him. “A jump? I’ll give you a jump. Sit in there and stare at me,” I mumbled to myself, while dialing my cell phone. “Hi. My name is Harley LeBeau...member number 99126777,” I began, quickly interrupted. “Sure...I’ll hold...I’m only stuck out in the freezing cold with a dead battery.”

Pretty Boy
returned with his vehicle, a brand new cherried-out Porsche 911. “You really don’t have to do this. I’m on hold with my car service.” A regular planner, I even had become forward-thinking enough to join a car service. All the traveling I did and I never had a car service before. After moving to the city, where I barely ever drove, I joined. Go figure!

“I won’t put you on hold,” he said, and there was that smile again. He lifted his hood. “I’m not sure if I have cables or not.” Now, that I believed. This guy didn’t look like he ever jumped a car before.

“I have some.” I closed my cell phone and pulled a set of jumper cables from my trunk. “Could you start her up? My car?” I asked, after attaching the cables. He obliged. Charlene pulled a few times, finally starting. I removed the cables while
Pretty Boy
closed the hoods on his car and mine. I stood before him, humbled, rubbing my hands together after their contact with the cold metal from Charlene’s frame. “Thank you. Now I feel kind of guilty I talked to you the way I did.”