I have these pictures in my closet where I write. A big board with a hodgepodge of clippings and pics of people and places that I have loved, randomly pinned in no particular order.
Things that inspire me. Sketches of my life, snippets of my history. A picture of Hotei, a Buddhist god, my friend Tara painted. A card of a bulldog wearing punk rock studded bracelets that she sent me.
A picture of a Susie Homemaker chick from the 50’s holding a cake that reads, “BITE ME” that my friend Kristin sent me somewhere around the time I was diagnosed with MS. A copy of my first published story.
This board holds many things that represent many friends and many periods in my life. Not all of my history has been pretty. Some of these memorabilia are dark; from darker times when I couldn’t quite find my way out of the tunnel. But, they also represent times when faith stepped in, and led the way. I don’t ever want to forgot those moments, or how far I have come, or how my faith almost literally carried me during these times.
My favorite picture is a picture of my late friend Vince at 86 years-old. It is carefully placed at the top right of this board. Precisely positioned so that he is always looking down at me as I write. In the picture he is sitting on the steps at his home on Cutler St. in Newark, just a few blocks from St. Lucy’s Church where he was christened as a child. I used to go there with him, and we would sit, and listen and hold hands. He was old and ready to pass, I was young and lost. For some reason, in that time and place, we needed each other. We were the best of friends.
Vincenzo Carnevale. He never married. He went to Georgetown on a track scholarship. He was fast. He was old-school Newark Italian. He loved his mother. Sometimes I can’t sleep because I lay in bed, trying to remember what her name was. He talked about her all the time. Rochetta? He thought it was the most beautiful name in the world. Mid-conversation, his mind would float away, and he would roll her name off his tongue like it was satin. Rochetta.
He said he was married to running and his best man was God. He couldn’t leave his mother. Those were the two biggest reasons he would offer when I would tease him about still being a bachelor. Every now and then he would ask me to drive him to the north side of Bloomfield. There was a canteen there, in a barn, and a girl named Betty. A memory of dancing with this beautiful young woman. We’d drive over, make a series of lefts and rights, and never find it. He’d say, “Oh never mind. Must not be here anymore.” And we’d make our way to Holsten’s.
In his 80’s he bought a blue Mustang 5.0. It was his baby. He would joke that he wanted to be buried in it. He wore more gold than Mr. T. and he was, by nature, loud. You could hear Vince coming from a mile away. He would roll into the running store I worked at like a ball of thunder. I always found his volume so ironic because his eyes were the quietest shade of ice blue. You could almost see your toes in them.
At the end of his life he struggled with a deep depression. He was hospitalized and almost catatonic. I remember T and I driving to Clara Maas Hospital to see him, and he was despondent. I handed him some pictures my students drew for him, and he couldn’t fathom why I was giving him these pictures. Where would he put them? He asked me to hold on to them. That was the precise moment I lost my friend.
He never truly recovered from this particular bout of depression. Shortly after he was released, he was removed from his home and placed in a nursing home. Vince’s house was the same place he was born and raised. It served as a fortress. It was a museum, dedicated to his life, covered in pictures of his family and his past. Not an inch of wall was left to place anymore memories. There was a huge picture of him and I on one particular wall. I wish so badly I had that picture now.
After I had given birth to Zoe, I was battling a severe Postpartum Depression. I was struggling. No, that is too weak of a description. I wanted to die. Of course he couldn’t understand, but he always tried. And even though we were separated geographically, he never let go of my hand. He would send me letters with money to buy her diapers, pictures of himself as a baby comparing his blue eyes to Zoe’s. We would talk on the phone. After every letter, ever phone call he would say, “Keep your head up kid.”
I was in Florida, 2006 and I was really trying to get my life back. I was walking across this park-like parade of grass to get to where I was staying when a stranger stopped me. He said, “This is going to sound crazy, but God or whoever told me to stop you and to say ‘keep your head up kid’”.
He explained he had never experienced anything like that, and was almost apologetic. I reassured him that I needed that message, thanked him, and continued on my way. Not very long after I got home I got the call, Vince had passed.
I couldn’t reconcile the feeling of loss, and the feeling of found-that was HIM speaking to me through that stranger. He found me, and used that stranger to tell me, one last time, to keep my head up…kid.
Keep your head up kid.
We have moved three times since those days. I have let go of many things. So, it is always crazy to me how I will be struggling with a particular ‘thing’ and I will find a letter from him, letters I didn’t know I still had. The other day one came out of the paper tray in my brand new wireless printer (that doesn’t work). We didn’t have that back then. How would his letter, from years and houses ago, find its way into the paper tray of a printer we have had maybe six months, that we have never used?
Last week I started writing my book. I was frustrated and telling myself I am crazy for even trying, that I could never write a book. While sitting at the computer, AJ was messing with the printer and pulled out the paper tray. Jammed into the back was a letter from Vince. It held a clipping about an 11 year-old who wrote a book. It was as if Vince was saying to me, “If she can do it, you can do it.”
I looked up at my memory board and said, “You’re killing me Vince. I am way too hormonal to handle this right now,” and laughed.
Vince was very special to me, beyond special. And I miss him. But, I know he speaks to me still. If I’m paying attention, and I slow down to look and read the signs, he is here still, always advising and encouraging me to keep my head up. Kid.
My only regret is not writing stuff down, the details of his life. I always feel like I owe him a place in these stories I write. I always hesitate because I struggle to remember the details. Everything from that time is such a blur that I forget, like his mother’s name. But I think he knows I got the essence of it all, I was paying attention.
His mother’s name was like satin, and rolled off his tongue. And his eyes were a quiet, clear blue that I could almost see my toes in...
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