It's my Life

 

There is something that my children will never know that I knew all too well. It was a portent of ill fortune. It was sign of waiting turmoil. It was the sighting of a lighthouse at a place where you were already on the shoals. It was the red glow of the old man’s cigarette as he sat on the back steps waiting for me to sneak into the house. 

  

My brothers, my sister and finally me, we all had boundaries and curfews. There were places we should not go. There were times when we had to be in. Beyond this we had a lot of freedom. But those limits, they were not negotiable things with permeable boundaries. Rules were rules. We were allowed out, we weren’t followed, we weren’t told exactly where we had to be or who we had to be with like the current generation. We just had to be back by a set time and we were not to be seen in certain places. 

 

Do kids these days understand the concept of freedom? I am not sure because their lives are so penciled in and booked and arranged. I just don’t know if they understand the concept of freedom to screw around.

 

I digress, as always. If you missed the curfew time by a few minutes there would be a short conversation. If you missed the mark by a lot Mom would go to bed but Dad would wait. This was especially true if the car you were driving was seen in a place you were not supposed to be. This was also true if he heard from a friend (and the old man had lots of friends) that you might have been up to something less than acceptable.

 

You would try to avoid confrontation by sneaking into the house. I know one of my brothers would climb up the roof and come in through a second story window. I was not that agile.

 

For me to get into my backyard, I had to pass through a gate. Our yard gates had their own nuances. You had to lift that horseshoe-shaped latch just right so it wouldn’t scrape or screech metal on metal. You then had to inch in so as not to make any other noise and then replace the latch quietly, really quietly. It was also essential to have your key out because jangling keys by the side door would alert someone that you were sneaking in. You had to get your night vision acclimated because mom would have pulled out different chairs around the dining room table and you dare not flip on the light switch. They would be awakened by that simple click. The chair thing was really a sobriety test. Nothing quite like whacking your shin and causing the chair to screech across the floor alerting everyone in the house to the exact hour you were returning.

 

But hell, you didn’t get this far if trouble was in the wind. Coming around the back of the house you knew you had better have your story straight if you smelled even a hint of tobacco in the air. Sometimes the wind brought that warning to you before you saw the red glowing end of the cigarette. It gave you a chance to bolster your story with details to make whatever lie you spun more plausible. But you should have worked on that before you got to the steps. When you saw that cigarette's glowing red light you knew judgment was come to be visited upon you.

 

I don’t remember screaming or yelling. However, I remember a commanding bass voice that would start out with a question “Boy, where have…what have…” you get the gist of the questions that would follow. His cigarette was held down now so he could smell for the scent of alcohol. He would be gauging your reaction time too. I don’t think he yelled because he wasn’t supposed to smoke and if Mom came down, he would have to explain that. But you knew there would be consequences.

 

I always thought I was alone in facing this situation until one night in 1975 or 76 I got to see Bruce Springsteen at the MSU Auditorium. He did a cover of “It’s My Life” that began with a long rap about meeting his old man in the darkened kitchen with the glow of a cigarette. Yeah, my kids will never know that.