This is an excerpt from a book I’m writing titled Free the Sorrow: A Grieving Father Breaks the Death Grip of Anger.
It’s the spring of 1973. I’m a high school sophomore in San Mateo, California, standing in a glass-walled hallway in my high school, looking out at the pool deck that anchors the courtyard of my industrial steel and concrete high school. The morning sun has worked its way across most of the pool area. I’ve just gotten out of morning swim practice and wolfed down two packs of instant oatmeal made with hot shower water, stirred with a spoon kept in my gym locker. My body feels clean inside, every artery, vein and capillary flushed from a 3,000-yard workout, my muscles feeling a slight ache for effort. My skin feels slightly prickly and smells faintly of chlorine. My hair, still wet, long enough to touch my collar, feels cool. I’m wearing a letter jacket, thick black flannel, stretchy collar and cuffs, tan faux-leather sleeves. A red A, my high school’s initial, and the embroidered icon of a varsity swimmer decorate my left breast. I have 10 minutes to get to homeroom, and I’m excited.
I have seven classes today. Art. Literature in Philosophy and Religion. Auto shop. Geometry. Chemistry. American History. And Spanish. Then, afternoon swim practice.
Other kids stream past me from the bus loading zone. I put my two binders, my history book, my Spanish book and my sack lunch down between my running shoes and stretch, lacing my fingers together behind my back and lifting my arms up to shoulder level to open up my chest. I lace my fingers the other way and do it again. Then I raise my hands straight overhead, like a football ref signaling a touchdown, and stretch upward with every muscle in my body, my feet flat on the floor. I’d been having some serious back pain, and, while I was pain free for the moment, this stretch was just what the doctor ordered to prevent a recurrence.
Three minutes. I grab my gear and run up the big staircase to the main level and my locker, take what I need, stash what I don’t and run down the hall to homeroom, my squeaky soles echoing off the walls.
After 6,000 more yards at afternoon practice, I ride the late bus home. Only athletes, drama students and kids who’ve been in detention ride this bus, so I have a seat to myself, my stack of binders and books next to me, and a window. My sister Colette’s already home from junior high. I notice my father is home from a business trip, reading in the living room. He’s wearing a blue button-down Oxford shirt over cuffed khaki pants and loafers, horn-rimmed glasses to read. His briefcase lies open in front of him. I say hi and head to the kitchen. I make a pre-dinner snack of a bowl of cottage cheese with strawberry jam, then head for my room and close the door. I’ve got a ton of homework.
After two hours of geometry proofs, Spanish conjugation exercises and a write-up of that day’s chemistry lab, I emerge, summoned by a call to dinner. Mom’s been home from her job as a tax accountant for half an hour. She’s changed out of her business suit into a sweater and jeans, then whipped out my father’s favorite dinner: steak, peas and noodles. I eat fast, eager to get back to my homework and anxious to avoid what’s come so many times before.
It’s Mom and Dad who do all the talking. Colette and I, at 12 and 15 and in different schools, aren’t friends yet. We eat silently, slowly dropping our heads lower as the volume of the discussion rises. I take the risk of going for seconds because I’m so hungry. Colette profits from the distraction and asks to be excused. There’s no break in the verbal skirmishing so she leaves anyway, and as I sit back down I hear the click of her door latch.
Bang! My father’s fist hits the table, the silverware clangs and the plates rattle. “I’m not going to take it any more!”
“You’ve been gone for three weeks! I can’t check with you on everything, I have to make decisions. I have to run this house!”
“But it’s MY house!”
I wolf the rest of my food, head down, as the cannonades fire back and forth. My mother, finished before me, has lit a cigarette.
“I quit last year,” my father says with disdain. “Why can’t you?”
I scoot back from the table and carry my plate to the kitchen. Back in my room, my heart feels loud in my ears and it’s impossible to concentrate as the argument continues. I turn on my radio, hoping some top-40 tunes like Stevie Wonder’s Superstition will drown out the battle and let me study.
It doesn’t work. I have to get away. I slip on a sweater and my letter jacket, grab a wool cap out of my Boy Scout backpack, and go to the bathroom. There’s a door from there to the side yard, and my practiced fingers turn the deadbolt without a sound as I escape into the quiet. I duck across the front of the house to the garage, sliding open the left door because the right one squeaks, and grab my 10-speed.
I fly away through the neighborhood in the dark. A mile away, through an opening in the fence that separates our neighborhood from the adjoining watershed preserve, I coast through the gap and jump off when the dirt path gets too soft to ride. Another 100 yards and I’m in a small grove of Monterey pines. I lie down on the pine needles, facing the reservoir and the Coastal Range beyond it.
It’s dead quiet. I lace my fingers behind my head, smell the pine sap, but do not smile. A quarter mile from my feet lies the San Andreas fault, where two continental plates grind against each other, building pressure, only friction keeping their edges locked together. I have no fear of the devastation this fault might cause. I’m fifteen. I’m a happy fifteen-year-old stepping away from a bad situation. I’m invincible.
Now I smile, and breathe.
It’s almost 11, and I’m cold. I sneak back in. It’s quiet now, which means my father is in bed and my mother is nursing a glass of scotch and smoking a cigarette, reading in her favorite living room chair.
I’ve done this maybe half a dozen times, and no one’s ever noticed.