needles only prick

the spring wind was not as it should have been: a thin zephyr playing with our clothes as it whips through the trees. no, that day, the day i left home, it was the kind of wind that is frustrating and intent on making you close your eyes because its stabbing them with your own hair and blowing your clothes against your body in the most unattractive angles.

my mother and i stood in the strange circular driveway of the house on 4201 haven street. we stood underneath the huge fir trees that grew all over the neighborhood, dwarfing us, two women of approximate equal height and weight, two woman of equal determination, two women who were acting though they hated each other, and only acting that way because they both know they didn't. i shouldn't say "two women" because i was 17, and in age and maturity, a girl. we stood, eye to eye, a few feet apart, it some strange hypnotic staredown, neither speaking.

it began as some sort of manic dream a few months ago, when i called my mom to say i was still unhappy at the college she had chosen for me, and that i wanted a change of scenery, and that i wanted to go to california and spend time with my father, who i never really knew. i've examined my intentions time and time again, and have had years to do so, to think and rethink about why i did that, if i moved away like my mother thought because i hated her, because i hated how she raised me, because i was ungrateful and abandoning my role in their family. and i have come to the conclusion that those things weren't true, but have also grown to understand why she thought so. i have thought that she has abandoned me - and at the time it was hard to understand it as any other way - she took me off her health insurance, she told me i could never come home, not for holidays, not ask for money, and told me that she knew what i was doing, had been where i was going, and that it was going to be a trainwreck. california was not a golden utopia of free thinking and promise in her mind - it was "her old stomping grounds" where she rambled about, and apparently, did not care to see me visit.

and as i stood there that day, i knew that i had no idea what i was in for. and, at seventeen, isn't that the thrill of the world? preparing yourself go to out and experience "it" and having no idea what "it" is - and not knowing i would find myself in different houses with different roommates - find myself living with a circus, with beautiful women and men, finding best friends, realizing age is inconsequential but also inextricably binding, losing innocence, finding myself in houses with numbers 29, 1964, 1323, 2759, 3548, or 1122, reeling and wounded from relationships, euphoric from sublime nights of running through barky twists and tangles of grapes, seeing fires, seeing oceans near fields of callalilies, seeing almost every mile of the eternal interstate 5, and ultimately having if only a minimally clearer sense of who i am when i wake up in the morning.

even then, thinking now, i was excited about bad relationships, heartbreak, cars breaking down, getting lost alone, working bad hours for bad bosses, though i didn't consciously think those things, but i think i was - because it was new. because it seemed important. because i felt like those things had to be experienced. because those were the stairs that break underneath your weight but allow you to feel like you have some immeasurable amount of treasured independence.

but all this, and an entire world more was to come, and i knew it, i could feel it, and it terrorized my stomach and raised my pulse, and like screaming and crying and laughing all at once, it was unstoppable. it was compulsive. it was pleasure, it was pain. growing up young, being treated as child but held to the responsibilities of an adult, all of it felt like it had funneled into this day, the day i moved out for reals, for forever, and this set into motion a series of events and stories that could only, for lack of a better name, be labeled as a girl growing up.

my mother and i just stood staring until my younger brother came outside. weeks of exhausting phone calls and fights, weeks of packing, and i had come home to get a final few boxes. after this there would be finals, my first year of college behind me, and my dad would drive from california to pack my entire physical existence into his subaru, and drive ten hours back down california, where i would unpack and try to orient myself in the dizzying mass of new highways, jobs, and people. but i think mom and i stood there in silence because we both were too confused to speak for fear of crying, or for fear of saying more mean things. and we had done both.

so i sighed, but couldn't hear it over the terrible wind, which was now pushing streams of pine needles and small branches down onto my car, onto my mother and brother and i. i knelt down to hug my brother, but as i did, he didn't put his arms back around me, didnt push his head into my stomach like his normal hugs, he just stood, stiff and unwelcoming for a few moments while i squeezed his small 10 year old body. suddenly, i felt him break in my arms, instantly melting into a wave of sobs and weeping, and his small fists began to wrap around me and pound into my back, eventually until he was both hugging, crying, and punching me all at once.

my mother stood watching, and began to slowly shake her head. she may have been wearing sunglasses, but she could still see right into me.

my brother turned to her and buried his face in the skirt of her green corduroy dress, fist fulls of the fabric, still sobbing; my mother's head was still slowly shaking.

i reached to hug her and she reached back. for about five seconds we stood hugging, my brother huddled between us, the wind blowing pine needles onto us, pricking the back of my neck. then i eased back, my mom let me go, and i stepped a few feet back towards my car.

my mother stood watching, still shaking her head, reaching down to console my brother, who, i was told much later, slept in my bed for weeks after i left; who, i was told much later, cried himself to sleep on my pillow every night.

that was it. it felt as final as it ever would. i turned and got into my car. as i backed out of the driveway, the scene was unreal: seeing the wind bend and curve the trees, completely silent and still in my car, as i brushed pine needles out of my tangled hair, watching my mother stand in the exact place in the driveway as she picked up my brother, much to large for her five foot frame. seeing the trees fold to the wishes of the wind. watching as my mother did all this while still slowly shaking her head.