. . . how beautiful you are

From the upcoming book, Sweet Jesus of the Cross-Dressers
By James Van Amber
----------
Dear Elizabeth:  Why I Never Told You How Beautiful You Are

Larry Cihlar and I—fellow Central Junior High rebels and low level troublemakers—are walking through your block behind the church on that narrow sidewalk next to your house when one of us, most likely me, blurted out how beautiful you are.  We are in the eighth grade, cursing too in almost the same breath, caught off guard suddenly with our coarse words by seeing your father on high, Pastor Phillips, on a ladder between the narrow of your church and your home.
       It is fall, October, when the bitter leaves are changing to bronze, and your father is putting up storm windows in one of the upstairs rooms.  I feel the rush of embarrassment and powerlessness, unable to retract the curse of what we’d just uttered.  I am certain he overheard us although he remained solemn and silent as we pass quietly under the ladder on the way to my apartment on Douglas Street where I live with my grandmother.
       My grandmother, who allows me to come and go as I like, often waits up for me when I go to the late show at the Andria or State Theater. I run to our little apartment and pass your home and the church hundreds of times through all the glorious seasons as sparrows sometimes make sudden flurried exits from the thick ivy that clings to the north wall of church.   Sometimes, after dark, the lights of your home seem warm and wonderful and safe and I always think of your house as a kind of important neighborhood sanctuary, almost holy.
       These were uncomplicated moments passing in those calm nights along Lincoln Avenue to Douglas Street.  Recently—for reasons yet obscure—I’ve been thinking about how much I love those streets, those houses, and the good people who lived there.  Sometimes I think living where I did is what saved me.
       I didn’t see you often except during the excitement of fall and winter games.  You were a distant cheerleader, dancer of happy chants and beautiful and I was certain you were smart, but we don’t often tell people they’re beautiful and smart—not then, not when we should, maybe rarely today if only to our children.  Maybe that’s enough. Beauty, as we see it, sometimes leaves us speechless anyway.  It does me.  But there was a moment when we did move in each other’s circle, close; a few feet apart.  You may not remember that moment.  It was fall again, 1963, with a slight chill in the thick night air and some of us in the neighborhood had gotten together for hide and seek at your place.  I think the reason I can recall it with ease is that it was so unusual to see you in the neighborhood outside of your home. Anyway, you and I had just snuck into the darkened church and there was a moment we met alone near the altar.  That’s when churches were open all night.  I was Catholic.  There were two options growing up Catholic.  A.  You were going to hell.  And B.  You were going to hell and it didn’t matter or something like that if you committed a mortal sin.  But most of my friends and acquaintances and neighbors were not Catholic.  That didn’t matter either.  We played, we talked, and we laughed.  I didn’t know the difference between a Catholic and a Lutheran anyway except priests weren’t married and had housekeepers and the Mass was in Latin.  Calvary Lutheran, your father’s church, was the only church I went into besides my own.  Suzanne Nelson and I went up into the choir loft one night and kissed with a kind of evil passion.
       There were breathtaking times full of excitement and possibility. But the time you and I were together in that single instance in time, I noticed the light on your face from a source near the altar.  I think we were crouched, waiting there so the others wouldn’t find us. It was only a moment and then we parted.  You were stunning with your short, dark hair and brilliant hazel eyes looking into mine.  You were too precious to kiss or embrace, but I felt like it.  But we didn’t embrace because you were the minister’s daughter, intelligent, Elizabeth Phillips, cheerleader, marvelous.  And that’s the way I think of you now when time and day seem shorter and there are less possibilities on the grim or happy reminder of what is to come.  I wanted to say that I now understand why some people don’t put photographs in reunion booklets, why some don’t attend reunions, why some can’t go home again, and why some have never left.  There may be other reasons too, but I think the passing of time is too sad, too shocking, too unnerving.  Best we remember scenes, moments, a particular face, the way we were—so bright and young and filled with hope and love.
       Part of me wants to go back and somehow live it again, do it over, make it better, longer lasting, say the things I should have said, but couldn’t.  Part of me wants to go back so the same streets, the same apartment, the same sidewalks.  I’m thinking that if my wife ever told me to leave after 43 years, that’s what I would do—go home—knowing full well that it would be cruel to my memory, my life, cruel even to the God who gives us the momentum to keep going where we are no matter what.
       I wasn’t in love with you.  I remember that moment because I saw, in that subdued precious light from the altar, what I’d always seen from a distance—how utterly beautiful you were.  I couldn’t speak of it then, only now as we reach our senior years and reflect on the past. I didn’t have a secret crush.  I admired you, thought of you as important in the town, in our school, mysterious, wonderful and
athletic.
       The fall after I turned 18 and left the safety of home and attended college I began to suffer the horrors of schizophrenia, a kaleidoscope of intruding thoughts and scenes, a complex mind, screaming, a brain traveling at a thousand miles an hour like walking into a movie theater with five screens playing at once at high speed.  I could no longer comprehend home as I once knew it.  But that passed eventually and years later I began to write down my thoughts about home and what
it meant to grow up in Alexandria, Minnesota.  And I thought of you and those moments and others like them.  I loved the places, whiffle ball by Larry Holverson’s garage, baseball, summer—all the seasons. So I wanted to thank you for that moment, that single instant in my life when I didn’t have to think, worry, fear.  That moment when I saw your handsome, lovely face close for the first time, saw how gorgeous you really are, a fellow traveler through time, someone with hopes and dreams, someone on the earth the same as I.
       A man said recently that there are at least 100 million stars in the Milky Way and the possibility of hundreds of thousands of planets revolving around those stars, some perhaps like Mother Earth.  But I’m absolutely certain there is no place and there are no people in the entire universe like the streets and homes on Lincoln Avenue and Douglas Streets.  So I salute you and I thank you for your cheers, your happiness, and the people you love.  I thank you for being on this earth so companionable with the people around you.  I thank you for the single moment in the church so long ago now when we were young and in love with the world and I dared not say what I wanted to say then and can only say now still with love and admiration and risk.
       “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.”
                                               The Tokens
Sincerely,
James Van Amber