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Dear Bobby
Thursday, June 5th, 2008 08:19 pm.
It was forty years ago today.
Just about this time, in fact. It was dark outside. I don't remember much, because I was only seven years old. But there are a few things I remember, and that's one of them. The lights were on in our living room, and they reflected off the windows because it was dark outside.
The other thing I remember clearly is my mom. She was young and pretty then, with dark hair that she always wore pulled back into a long braid, tied with a length of black elastic. She was sitting on our green sofa, in front of the TV. Her head was bowed into one hand, and she was crying. My mom didn't cry very often, so I remember that. My dad stood behind her, his face stony with grief. I remember how his forehead was drawn up tight the way it always got when he was angry, and he didn't say anything for the longest time.
The one thing I don't remember very clearly is you. I was so young, you see, and my parents kept us very sheltered when we were small, so I knew little of the world of big people. I knew your face from the TV, vaguely. You were young and handsome, and my parents always smiled when you appeared. There were always crowds around you, and it seemed you made people happy.
Even though I was too little to really know what was going on in the world, I remember that 1968 was a year when things were building up. It seemed like we were climbing somehow, upwards into sunlight. There were bad things and good things and crazy things, out there in the world, but I was being raised with a basic hopefulness about life and the future, probably because of my parents' immigrant contentment at being in this country, with a nice little house and good weather and good schools. The world was a good place when I was growing up, and America was a good place, and I couldn't imagine even wanting to be anywhere else.
And then the gun came up and you were taken away, and my mom cried, and I was scared because she wouldn't tell me what was wrong at first. Even when she told me, I didn't understand. But over the following days and weeks and years, the sunlight wasn't so bright anymore, and even though the future still seemed alright, it didn't have that golden tone, the blue-and-white cleanliness I had imagined it would have, the taste of bright clean water and the promise of tomorrow. It took long years before I understood that that may have been our last chance. That you were our last chance, and that our fate was violently pushed aside that night, off the sunlit upward path and down into a dark forest, a place where monsters dwell.
I wish I could have known you. I wish I could have remembered you - the words you spoke, the dreams you made people dream, the hope you gave us. Because there was so much of it that year. It was everywhere, filtering down into so many lives, even that of a little girl who didn't know anything about politics or government, just that things looked like they would always get better and better.
And that would have been nice to remember.
It was forty years ago today.
Just about this time, in fact. It was dark outside. I don't remember much, because I was only seven years old. But there are a few things I remember, and that's one of them. The lights were on in our living room, and they reflected off the windows because it was dark outside.
The other thing I remember clearly is my mom. She was young and pretty then, with dark hair that she always wore pulled back into a long braid, tied with a length of black elastic. She was sitting on our green sofa, in front of the TV. Her head was bowed into one hand, and she was crying. My mom didn't cry very often, so I remember that. My dad stood behind her, his face stony with grief. I remember how his forehead was drawn up tight the way it always got when he was angry, and he didn't say anything for the longest time.
The one thing I don't remember very clearly is you. I was so young, you see, and my parents kept us very sheltered when we were small, so I knew little of the world of big people. I knew your face from the TV, vaguely. You were young and handsome, and my parents always smiled when you appeared. There were always crowds around you, and it seemed you made people happy.
Even though I was too little to really know what was going on in the world, I remember that 1968 was a year when things were building up. It seemed like we were climbing somehow, upwards into sunlight. There were bad things and good things and crazy things, out there in the world, but I was being raised with a basic hopefulness about life and the future, probably because of my parents' immigrant contentment at being in this country, with a nice little house and good weather and good schools. The world was a good place when I was growing up, and America was a good place, and I couldn't imagine even wanting to be anywhere else.
And then the gun came up and you were taken away, and my mom cried, and I was scared because she wouldn't tell me what was wrong at first. Even when she told me, I didn't understand. But over the following days and weeks and years, the sunlight wasn't so bright anymore, and even though the future still seemed alright, it didn't have that golden tone, the blue-and-white cleanliness I had imagined it would have, the taste of bright clean water and the promise of tomorrow. It took long years before I understood that that may have been our last chance. That you were our last chance, and that our fate was violently pushed aside that night, off the sunlit upward path and down into a dark forest, a place where monsters dwell.
I wish I could have known you. I wish I could have remembered you - the words you spoke, the dreams you made people dream, the hope you gave us. Because there was so much of it that year. It was everywhere, filtering down into so many lives, even that of a little girl who didn't know anything about politics or government, just that things looked like they would always get better and better.
And that would have been nice to remember.
