The day was ungodly hot in that east coast way that make one wonder what the hell people are talking about when they refer to “dry heat.” It was a humid ninety degrees, an inescapable heat emanating a confusing miasma of honey and anger. I hate that weather.

Those of us who weren’t in the band were assigned nebulous roles. We just had to hang out with the old folks, I guess. This was frightening to me, because I humans scared me more than they should have, but my fear rightfully shamed me, and I bit the bullet and dove in.

During the function, I went into the tent erected on the lawn. This tent looked like a makeshift parking lot at a farmer’s market: one half vegetables, one half vehicles. But the vegetables were people trapped in their husks, and the vehicles were wheelchairs.

I approached one elderly lady and said hello. She didn’t speak to me. Her face was fair and translucent, covered in a faint network of wrinkles as if her skin had been wadded up and tossed in my mother’s purse with the spare Kleenex. Her hair was dark grey and wiry, her bespectacled eyes were a soup of blue and yellow.

There was a man behind her, who was also in a wheelchair. When I made eye contact with him and said hello, his grooved face puppeted itself into a laborious smile like it was being manipulated by wires. In my mind’s eye, I costume him in a veteran’s uniform. But that might not be accurate. Even for me, with all my 26 years, memories become muddled. The man might have been bald-headed, and dressed in a button-down jersey, for all my memory's good for.

Memories are served up in a punchbowl and spiked with something vengeful. They go down real easy, with the flavor of nostalgia, but before you know it you've had too much, and everything comes spurting forth in a spontaneous fountain, so fast that you can't discern one color from another.

The woman didn't speak to me, but she gazed up at my Grace Kelly face for what seemed like ages. She grasped my hand as soon as I approached her, and patted it with sad gratitude.

I didn’t know whether I reminded her of someone, whether she dearly wanted to say something but couldn’t, or whether she was just plain old happy for the company. I was a ghost or a promise, or some combination thereof. I felt like I was more representation than reality.

I looked from the woman to the craggy-faced man behind her, and tried to mentally unveil them of their blanket of wrinkles and silence, to picture how they looked when they were younger. I couldn’t do it. These people weren’t scary, but merely lonely and tired, and somehow incapable of the conversation they craved.

That is one of my saddest memories.

Okay, see, I watched The Notebook recently, which reminded me of the above.

Among other stuff (because I’m a total sap), something that appealed to me about that movie was that the elderly lovers actually kissed in their kissing scenes. It wasn’t full on Frenching, really, but the kisses were more passionate than the papery facsimiles in which you usually see onscreen senior actors engage.

Seriously, Hollywood. I think we can handle a little bit of visceral humanity among older actors. Give everyone a little benefit of the doubt.

I recognize that things fall apart as we age, but I flat-out refuse to believe that, while we still have all our faculties intact, we could possibly forget how to kiss.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Arm-in-Arm Down Burgundy - 09.05.05

Motivated! - 08.25.05

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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