Remember When, chapter 2
There are things about your childhood you never forget; summers that seem to go on forever, the feel of sunkissed skin and untamed hair, of grass tickling your ankles, and a curiosity and a faith in the world so strong that bottling it up and holding it hostage forever seems like the best idea. There is an excitement in the art of discovering the world inch by inch, a joy in scouring your backyard with a microscope and tall boots, when frogs and worms and other insects are fascinating to watch and even more fun to manipulate. There is a trust in the world, in the great unknown, a sense that you are protected by this invisible barrier that wraps clear around you and presumably your family. There is a certainty somewhere deep within that playing outside until it's dark and the feel of scraped knees and bruised elbows will be enough to make you happy for your whole life.
Adolescence brings with it the promise of awkwardness and embarrassing moments best saved for your later twenties when it doesn't make you blush to share them any more. Luckily, it is also in these earlier years that you learn how to form friendships, unselfish and pure friendships that bring relief to those tender moments of complete mortification. Pre-teen years yield the first signs of being aware of the opposite sex, of strange stirrings and lame flirting that makes the hours in a school afternoon run out just a little quicker. Passing notes in class, whispering to your friends, and trying to sculpt your hair just a little different in the hopes of catching that special someone's eye, those moments prepare you for high school.
The long awaited entrance into high school encourages all sorts of curiosity and new experiences, and in these new experiences awaits the first traces of hurried love, unsure kisses, and a stirring sense of self that accumulates somewhere between the math problems you'll never use and the history lessons you can't seem to stay awake through. And somehow you find that the yearning to get out into the world is back again, that the eagerness to trek a new path through the unknown has claimed you, much like it did when you were an explorer in your backyard all those years ago. The promises of college and careers surface, the talk of wanting families, or not wanting families in some cases. Everything seems to move so fast, tearing your mind and heart in about a hundred different directions all at once, hormones and teen angst included.
I was 13 when I moved away from the East Coast, North Carolina to be exact. And as far as I was concerned we had moved into an unlikeable world. I had come from a school with about eight hundred total kids, with a seventh grade class consisting of about two-hundred of those students. I also had a group of friends that I intended to fuse to my hip until the uncertainty of puberty made its way from our lives. But this all had been ripped away from me when an unforeseen family crisis lodged itself between my happiness and the impending summer before eighth grade.
We were moving, every child's worst nightmare come true. I remember staring stupidly at my Father who looked just as sorry to be telling me this news as I was to be hearing it. There was of course the standard reassurance of the possibility of making new friends and loving my new school, but I wasn't really interested in hearing any of this. I behaved accordingly, pleading and begging, throwing a small fit in the middle of the kitchen as my Mother, who was nursing a migraine at the time, begged me to stop. I lost count of how many times I claimed it was unfair, of how many times I tried to negotiate, to insist that they consider the idea of letting my best friend's parents adopt me. But my desperation wasn't going to be changing any minds, we were set to leave in a month.
Four weeks and two days later, our caravan of misery and prized possessions set off for the other side of the country, literally. It was a hot and sticky summer, the humid air blowing through the open windows barely sufficient enough to keep a layer of my skin from peeling off every time I picked my legs up off the seat. With every mile we drove I felt my resentment rising, making my eyes burn with tears as I laid my cheek against the window, imagining I was anywhere but in that car.
My Mother slept for most of the way there, our journey taking us about five days total with frequent stops to sleep, eat and stretch. I entertained my brother Graham, who was 5 at the time, by playing annoying games with the objects that were whizzing by on the side of the road, or sometimes, with whatever was lying around in the car. He didn't really understand what was happening, he thought we were playing a game. I was jealous of him right then and there for still being naive. I wanted that back just for a moment, just to cancel out all of the conflicting feelings I felt with having to pick up from a life I had always known and move so far away.
Upon our arrival in northern California, I learned that we were going to be living in the middle of nowhere, just east of the smallest town that ever existed. We might as well have built a treehouse with a primitive water system in the middle of the Congo, because as far as I was concerned, we had just moved into the freakin' sticks.
"Just try, Marin. Please?" My Dad mumbled in exhaustion, shoving a box marked 'Mom's China: Be Gentle' into my hands. I resisted the urge to throw the box on the ground and stomp on it until the intricate pattern woven on her precious white plates was no more. But instead, I dutifully lugged the box into the kitchen, setting it down amongst the other million boxes that needed sorting.
I had just come back out to the car for more boxes when I saw someone sprinting at us, a young kid to be exact. He was traveling unreasonably fast and grinning widely. "You guys must be our new neighbors!" He exclaimed once he reached us, gasping for air as a thin line of sweat formed on his brow. "I...I live down the road..." He trailed off again, hands surrendering to his knees as he bent to intake air.
My Dad grinned down at the young kid as he cuddled a box close to his chest. "It's nice to meet you," He politely replies. "My name is John Emerson, and this is my daughter Marin."
The new comer's head lobs up curiously. "Marin?" He repeats. "I've never heard that name before."
It wasn't like I had never been questioned about my name, but I sensed this kid was well on his way to mocking me already. "Well, what's your name?" I murmur indignantly, resisting the urge to put my hands on my hips, something I had seen in movies. The move would suggest that I had attitude. Truth be told, I wasn't really sure if I did or not, but he didn't need to know that.
With a grin and an extension of his hand, he mumbles, "I'm Tre...I'm in a band. Do you want to see my drums?"
I felt my lips forming a shocked expression. I wasn't sure which part to respond to, but going to see a drum set sounded better than sitting around unpacking all day. Finally gaining some composure while still eyeing the slightly off balance kid in front of me, I turn to my dad. "Can I go?"
My Dad, always one for being slightly overprotective, eyes the young kid who had taken to itching his scrawny ankle, almost falling to the ground when he leaned over too far. Dad finally grinned at me after another moment of surveying our visitor, similar thoughts presumably running through his mind. We both thought this gangly kid was harmless. "Umm okay, yeah. But be back by dinner...okay?"
I nodded in return, turning to follow Tre down a gravel road, towards where, I had no idea. Later on I would decide that my Dad and I had both been wrong, he wasn't harmless. He was in fact, as I would find out mere seconds later, unable to keep himself out of trouble as he relentlessly searched for ways to entertain his constantly wandering mind and even busier body.
He was also beautiful; a young boy with wild hair and even wilder eyes, his family tagged with a reputation for being a little unorthodox. I remember those eyes, blue as the ocean and staring expectantly back at me. "My Mom had a mental break down so my Dad moved us up here to start over," I had simply offered later on and he pressed for no further information. He was immediately accepting, grabbing my hand and leading me towards our first adventure. And right then and there, in the humid and unforgettable summer of 1985, our bond was merged.
I remember his hand wrapped around mine, pulling me through the woods and into abandoned homes farther down the hill. Vivid ghost stories accompanied many of these adventures, Tre providing endless commentary about whatever subject popped into his brain. I remember trying in vain to keep up with this boy who had so much energy that it seemed unlikely he'd make it past the age of twenty. Well, at least not with all of his limbs accounted for.
During the summers we swam in ponds and built forts that never seemed to last through the night. In the winter we would build snowmen to pass the time and go sledding. And, for every other season of the year, we got into trouble. I can recall being grounded to my room more times than not. And just to be clear, I really was a good kid. I was just guilty by association. The punishment never lasted long though because my parents quickly figured out that they would rather have me out getting into trouble than sitting around the house moping, restless at not being able to go out and spend time with Tre.
There was also his love for music that kept us busy. Most of the time, if we weren't sneaking into town or traipsing along the mountain side, he was practicing with his band and teaching me all the finer points of music. I would usually go and watch The Lookouts rehearse, planting myself on the cool cement of Larry's garage, watching as Tre beat the shit out of the drums. It always surprised people, Tre's ability to stay focused and play for long periods of time, but he was a natural. His appreciation for music was contagious, something that stuck with you even after he left your sight. To this day I can feel his influence running through my veins, stemming into my brain. 'No Marin, they're complete shit...let's listen to The Who some more...'
Eventually, after a few long and clueless years, friendship had turned into more. Spending so much time together and being there for the transition into hormones and wanting a drivers licence had unintentionally set us up for this it seemed. We had become aware of each other around the same time because suddenly Tre had started combing his hair and burping less. I found myself stuttering whenever I was around him, our hands brushing none too covertly as we walked side by side, struggling for something to say for the first time in three years.
It was odd not to think of him as just my best friend and partner in crime any more, but instead as someone of the opposite sex . He was someone I realized I couldn't keep my eyes off of, and it wasn't because he was threatening to eat a worm or because he was dangling from the top branch of a flimsy tree. Suddenly he was growing up and he was smiling at me in a way that made everything in my stomach screw up into stupid patterns, creating a blush on my cheeks that could rival a tomato.
Our curiosity for life never wavered, just shifted, aiming finally towards one another instead of the outdoors. The outdoors had always been our playground, nature our guide. Suddenly it became the backdrop for our teenage years, the tall grass a bed for kissing and wrestling instead of collecting bugs and playing hide and seek. Our quest to be sneaky and unnoticeable as children quickly served our interests as teens, trying in vain not to get caught coming in past curfew or worse, sneaking in just as the sun was coming up.
The first kiss was awkward and brief, but the next one was better. Fumbling hands and a desperation we were quickly becoming accustomed to left us senseless and confused most of the time, but it never changed us. We never spoke of it, never labeled ourselves, but at night when our families had gone to bed he would sneak through my window and curl against me, soft lips seeking mine in the darkness.
If I think real hard I can still remember how he smelled; he smelled of summer, sun screen, the outdoors and fresh rain. His skin was soft and always warm, his eyes this liquid blue that glistened in the darkness. We would lie together until dawn, facing each other and giggling as we talked about stupid and useless things. He liked to make up stories and I liked to listen. He had big, crazy dreams about being famous and the world's greatest drummer...after Keith Moon, of course. I watched his eyes sparkle from underneath a matt of brown hair and playful eyebrows as he spoke, a determination to leave that place so confidently stored away inside himself.
I craved touching him, feeling all of that amazing energy running under his tanned skin. He was like this wild force I felt like I could never tame, one I never wanted to. I loved being tangled in his arms, the moonlight crashing down on us as we lay under it at night, trying to decide which star formations we liked and the ones we felt didn't belong for one reason or another. I remember vividly the feel of his unsure fingertips on my skin, his fingers wrapped around the strands of my then strawberry blonde hair.
Then, the sole reason we were ripped apart; one trip to Berkeley, one pair of haunting green eyes. I had just turned seventeen, and I felt like I had been hit by a train when Billie Joe Armstrong came into our lives in the spring of 88. I had officially accepted the fact that nothing would ever be the same again just two seconds after being in the same room as him. He seemed to have that effect on most people, I would later come to find.
And so it goes, this particular pair of green eyes, this unstoppable train, changed me in more ways than I can even count in my head. And unfortunately, this meeting changed Tre and me too. Suddenly our world, our existence up on that mountain was quickly forced into question. Somehow it didn't mean much out in the real world, our unspoken pretense unable to hold up any longer. Everything we had spent so long building up suddenly laid dismantled in front of us.
And that is really where our story begins. It begins somewhere between the months when I lost my mind trying to decide between the boy who had effortlessly captured my heart so many years ago, and the boy I didn't realize I had been waiting for until he appeared, blue-haired and destined for an unforeseen fame.
Our lives would never be the same. I was never the same.
Adolescence brings with it the promise of awkwardness and embarrassing moments best saved for your later twenties when it doesn't make you blush to share them any more. Luckily, it is also in these earlier years that you learn how to form friendships, unselfish and pure friendships that bring relief to those tender moments of complete mortification. Pre-teen years yield the first signs of being aware of the opposite sex, of strange stirrings and lame flirting that makes the hours in a school afternoon run out just a little quicker. Passing notes in class, whispering to your friends, and trying to sculpt your hair just a little different in the hopes of catching that special someone's eye, those moments prepare you for high school.
The long awaited entrance into high school encourages all sorts of curiosity and new experiences, and in these new experiences awaits the first traces of hurried love, unsure kisses, and a stirring sense of self that accumulates somewhere between the math problems you'll never use and the history lessons you can't seem to stay awake through. And somehow you find that the yearning to get out into the world is back again, that the eagerness to trek a new path through the unknown has claimed you, much like it did when you were an explorer in your backyard all those years ago. The promises of college and careers surface, the talk of wanting families, or not wanting families in some cases. Everything seems to move so fast, tearing your mind and heart in about a hundred different directions all at once, hormones and teen angst included.
I was 13 when I moved away from the East Coast, North Carolina to be exact. And as far as I was concerned we had moved into an unlikeable world. I had come from a school with about eight hundred total kids, with a seventh grade class consisting of about two-hundred of those students. I also had a group of friends that I intended to fuse to my hip until the uncertainty of puberty made its way from our lives. But this all had been ripped away from me when an unforeseen family crisis lodged itself between my happiness and the impending summer before eighth grade.
We were moving, every child's worst nightmare come true. I remember staring stupidly at my Father who looked just as sorry to be telling me this news as I was to be hearing it. There was of course the standard reassurance of the possibility of making new friends and loving my new school, but I wasn't really interested in hearing any of this. I behaved accordingly, pleading and begging, throwing a small fit in the middle of the kitchen as my Mother, who was nursing a migraine at the time, begged me to stop. I lost count of how many times I claimed it was unfair, of how many times I tried to negotiate, to insist that they consider the idea of letting my best friend's parents adopt me. But my desperation wasn't going to be changing any minds, we were set to leave in a month.
Four weeks and two days later, our caravan of misery and prized possessions set off for the other side of the country, literally. It was a hot and sticky summer, the humid air blowing through the open windows barely sufficient enough to keep a layer of my skin from peeling off every time I picked my legs up off the seat. With every mile we drove I felt my resentment rising, making my eyes burn with tears as I laid my cheek against the window, imagining I was anywhere but in that car.
My Mother slept for most of the way there, our journey taking us about five days total with frequent stops to sleep, eat and stretch. I entertained my brother Graham, who was 5 at the time, by playing annoying games with the objects that were whizzing by on the side of the road, or sometimes, with whatever was lying around in the car. He didn't really understand what was happening, he thought we were playing a game. I was jealous of him right then and there for still being naive. I wanted that back just for a moment, just to cancel out all of the conflicting feelings I felt with having to pick up from a life I had always known and move so far away.
Upon our arrival in northern California, I learned that we were going to be living in the middle of nowhere, just east of the smallest town that ever existed. We might as well have built a treehouse with a primitive water system in the middle of the Congo, because as far as I was concerned, we had just moved into the freakin' sticks.
"Just try, Marin. Please?" My Dad mumbled in exhaustion, shoving a box marked 'Mom's China: Be Gentle' into my hands. I resisted the urge to throw the box on the ground and stomp on it until the intricate pattern woven on her precious white plates was no more. But instead, I dutifully lugged the box into the kitchen, setting it down amongst the other million boxes that needed sorting.
I had just come back out to the car for more boxes when I saw someone sprinting at us, a young kid to be exact. He was traveling unreasonably fast and grinning widely. "You guys must be our new neighbors!" He exclaimed once he reached us, gasping for air as a thin line of sweat formed on his brow. "I...I live down the road..." He trailed off again, hands surrendering to his knees as he bent to intake air.
My Dad grinned down at the young kid as he cuddled a box close to his chest. "It's nice to meet you," He politely replies. "My name is John Emerson, and this is my daughter Marin."
The new comer's head lobs up curiously. "Marin?" He repeats. "I've never heard that name before."
It wasn't like I had never been questioned about my name, but I sensed this kid was well on his way to mocking me already. "Well, what's your name?" I murmur indignantly, resisting the urge to put my hands on my hips, something I had seen in movies. The move would suggest that I had attitude. Truth be told, I wasn't really sure if I did or not, but he didn't need to know that.
With a grin and an extension of his hand, he mumbles, "I'm Tre...I'm in a band. Do you want to see my drums?"
I felt my lips forming a shocked expression. I wasn't sure which part to respond to, but going to see a drum set sounded better than sitting around unpacking all day. Finally gaining some composure while still eyeing the slightly off balance kid in front of me, I turn to my dad. "Can I go?"
My Dad, always one for being slightly overprotective, eyes the young kid who had taken to itching his scrawny ankle, almost falling to the ground when he leaned over too far. Dad finally grinned at me after another moment of surveying our visitor, similar thoughts presumably running through his mind. We both thought this gangly kid was harmless. "Umm okay, yeah. But be back by dinner...okay?"
I nodded in return, turning to follow Tre down a gravel road, towards where, I had no idea. Later on I would decide that my Dad and I had both been wrong, he wasn't harmless. He was in fact, as I would find out mere seconds later, unable to keep himself out of trouble as he relentlessly searched for ways to entertain his constantly wandering mind and even busier body.
He was also beautiful; a young boy with wild hair and even wilder eyes, his family tagged with a reputation for being a little unorthodox. I remember those eyes, blue as the ocean and staring expectantly back at me. "My Mom had a mental break down so my Dad moved us up here to start over," I had simply offered later on and he pressed for no further information. He was immediately accepting, grabbing my hand and leading me towards our first adventure. And right then and there, in the humid and unforgettable summer of 1985, our bond was merged.
I remember his hand wrapped around mine, pulling me through the woods and into abandoned homes farther down the hill. Vivid ghost stories accompanied many of these adventures, Tre providing endless commentary about whatever subject popped into his brain. I remember trying in vain to keep up with this boy who had so much energy that it seemed unlikely he'd make it past the age of twenty. Well, at least not with all of his limbs accounted for.
During the summers we swam in ponds and built forts that never seemed to last through the night. In the winter we would build snowmen to pass the time and go sledding. And, for every other season of the year, we got into trouble. I can recall being grounded to my room more times than not. And just to be clear, I really was a good kid. I was just guilty by association. The punishment never lasted long though because my parents quickly figured out that they would rather have me out getting into trouble than sitting around the house moping, restless at not being able to go out and spend time with Tre.
There was also his love for music that kept us busy. Most of the time, if we weren't sneaking into town or traipsing along the mountain side, he was practicing with his band and teaching me all the finer points of music. I would usually go and watch The Lookouts rehearse, planting myself on the cool cement of Larry's garage, watching as Tre beat the shit out of the drums. It always surprised people, Tre's ability to stay focused and play for long periods of time, but he was a natural. His appreciation for music was contagious, something that stuck with you even after he left your sight. To this day I can feel his influence running through my veins, stemming into my brain. 'No Marin, they're complete shit...let's listen to The Who some more...'
Eventually, after a few long and clueless years, friendship had turned into more. Spending so much time together and being there for the transition into hormones and wanting a drivers licence had unintentionally set us up for this it seemed. We had become aware of each other around the same time because suddenly Tre had started combing his hair and burping less. I found myself stuttering whenever I was around him, our hands brushing none too covertly as we walked side by side, struggling for something to say for the first time in three years.
It was odd not to think of him as just my best friend and partner in crime any more, but instead as someone of the opposite sex . He was someone I realized I couldn't keep my eyes off of, and it wasn't because he was threatening to eat a worm or because he was dangling from the top branch of a flimsy tree. Suddenly he was growing up and he was smiling at me in a way that made everything in my stomach screw up into stupid patterns, creating a blush on my cheeks that could rival a tomato.
Our curiosity for life never wavered, just shifted, aiming finally towards one another instead of the outdoors. The outdoors had always been our playground, nature our guide. Suddenly it became the backdrop for our teenage years, the tall grass a bed for kissing and wrestling instead of collecting bugs and playing hide and seek. Our quest to be sneaky and unnoticeable as children quickly served our interests as teens, trying in vain not to get caught coming in past curfew or worse, sneaking in just as the sun was coming up.
The first kiss was awkward and brief, but the next one was better. Fumbling hands and a desperation we were quickly becoming accustomed to left us senseless and confused most of the time, but it never changed us. We never spoke of it, never labeled ourselves, but at night when our families had gone to bed he would sneak through my window and curl against me, soft lips seeking mine in the darkness.
If I think real hard I can still remember how he smelled; he smelled of summer, sun screen, the outdoors and fresh rain. His skin was soft and always warm, his eyes this liquid blue that glistened in the darkness. We would lie together until dawn, facing each other and giggling as we talked about stupid and useless things. He liked to make up stories and I liked to listen. He had big, crazy dreams about being famous and the world's greatest drummer...after Keith Moon, of course. I watched his eyes sparkle from underneath a matt of brown hair and playful eyebrows as he spoke, a determination to leave that place so confidently stored away inside himself.
I craved touching him, feeling all of that amazing energy running under his tanned skin. He was like this wild force I felt like I could never tame, one I never wanted to. I loved being tangled in his arms, the moonlight crashing down on us as we lay under it at night, trying to decide which star formations we liked and the ones we felt didn't belong for one reason or another. I remember vividly the feel of his unsure fingertips on my skin, his fingers wrapped around the strands of my then strawberry blonde hair.
Then, the sole reason we were ripped apart; one trip to Berkeley, one pair of haunting green eyes. I had just turned seventeen, and I felt like I had been hit by a train when Billie Joe Armstrong came into our lives in the spring of 88. I had officially accepted the fact that nothing would ever be the same again just two seconds after being in the same room as him. He seemed to have that effect on most people, I would later come to find.
And so it goes, this particular pair of green eyes, this unstoppable train, changed me in more ways than I can even count in my head. And unfortunately, this meeting changed Tre and me too. Suddenly our world, our existence up on that mountain was quickly forced into question. Somehow it didn't mean much out in the real world, our unspoken pretense unable to hold up any longer. Everything we had spent so long building up suddenly laid dismantled in front of us.
And that is really where our story begins. It begins somewhere between the months when I lost my mind trying to decide between the boy who had effortlessly captured my heart so many years ago, and the boy I didn't realize I had been waiting for until he appeared, blue-haired and destined for an unforeseen fame.
Our lives would never be the same. I was never the same.
