I’m sitting here in my study having just read your letter for the third time, Hoke. Such an occasion is usually not worth mentioning, but tonight, while reading and commenting in these quiet morning hours, I’ve been simultaneously working my way through two tubs of Mi Ranchito salsa and a bottle of Mexican Coke. The coke is the lone holdover from a sixer I purchased for the Fourth of July; the salsa’s been sitting in the fridge since Conch’s birthday on the eighth. I initially snuck away to the kitchen for another can of Ginger Lime Diet Coke and a sensible two-hundred-calorie dessert, but when I spied the Ziploc bag filled with freshly made cantina chips—no preservatives to keep them crisp for a fortnight—I couldn’t stomach the thought of them going stale in the next day or two; if growing up with a once-poor parent instills in you anything, it’s to not waste food. So I uncovered the last Coke from where I’d hidden it in the garage-fridge—I love Coke with Mexican food—grabbed the half-eaten tub of salsa that accompanied the chips, and absconded to my study; no one but the scale Monday morning would know of my indiscretion. I reasoned also that once I finished the salsa, I’d have no choice but to return the remainder of the chips to the kitchen and retreat to my laptop reasonably satisfied. But it all tasted so wonderful—<quote-01>the salt and crunch of tortilla chips, the cold tang of salsa<quote-01>, the bubbly sweetness of cola—that when I finished off the half-eaten tub, I returned to the kitchen for the unopened one. This second tub is now emptier than the first when I began, the gallon bag of chips reduced to fragments and sediment. I record this memory here, I guess, so that I don’t only remember the guilt, so that I do remember the <quote-02>blissful little groove I found myself in<quote-02>, the easy back-and-forth of eating and editing like a game of catch, an hour of chips, dips, sips, tips, and clips. I can deny myself such pleasures another night.
So.
Your revelation, Hoke, of the first foreboding moment in this still untold Lulo Saga, how an anxious chord clanged beneath the sweetest of summer symphonies two years ago, takes me back to another memorable August day—August 25th, 2007—the day of my wedding. First, however, I can’t help but return to a cherished image in my phone—a favorite of mine—a selfie of you and me during that Sunday afternoon game from 2018, the Seattle skyline beyond the left field bleachers behind us, beyond the bullpen where we watched Kersh get loose. I now scan your face for tells, your posture; you’re doing something kind of weird with your right hand. I’ve never noticed it before. I’m reaching, I think. Still, the image will take on a second life for me now, a subtext.
I’ve performed this sort of artifactual reexamination before, on footage from our wedding: looking to Kristen’s father’s eyes as he walked her down the aisle, listening to his voice as he made his toast, scrutinizing his demeanor during their dance. You see, he learned the day before—the morning of <quote-03>our rehearsal dinner<quote-03>—that he’d been unceremoniously fired from his job of thirty-plus years; Kristen and I, of course, would remain in the dark until after our honeymoon. I guess I could try and muster for you both the outrageous specifics of it all, recall the disputed play-by-play, but the story isn’t really mine to tell; anyway, I’d probably get more wrong than right. Still, what a thing to boil over on the eve of your only daughter’s wedding. What a thing to try and deny. I wonder if any of his anticipatory happiness—and it was prodigious; “father of the bride,” after all—even made it to his memory.
What’s the opposite of “all’s well that ends well?” Murphy’s Law?
As for my own—usually very dependable—memory, it let me down Thursday before last, while driving with Kristen to pick up Grammar from her folks. I was feeling nostalgic, speeding north along Euclid in the summer dusk, windows down, and I remarked to her that it was the twentieth anniversary of a particular group outing to the Family Fun Center, the scene of one of our handful of flirtations in the days leading up to our first kiss. She didn’t question the particulars and joined me in the syrupy memory of it all, the same warm breeze from two decades past on our faces.
The next day, however, looking through some old anniversary letters <quote-04>I’d saved to my laptop<quote-04>, I found a document from 2015 titled, “Our Week.” That year—low on funds—I’d written her a letter every day from the 30th to the 7th as if I were reliving our first flirtatious week from 2000 in real-time. “We’re going to the movies tonight—a group of us—to see The Patriot,” the very first one begins, “I didn’t see you today,” the next. Imagine my chagrin, though, upon arriving at the second of July and finding this: “The first glimpse I have of you is across an expanse of parking lot in front of the Edwards 22.”
I cherish the memory of this week more than any from my entire life, and here I was, twenty years removed or not, misremembering the brief timeline. The round of mini-golf, as it turns out, occurred not on the second—when we saw Me, Myself, and Irene with Koontz and Pat—but on the sixth. Reading back the details from that night, I realized that I hadn’t actually forgotten anything—all the right bells still were ringing—but I don’t know that I would’ve been able to conjure the exact specifics—that Tom drove us all that night in his dad’s Lincoln Mark VII, for instance—without the script in front of me. Could I have summoned the mood of that evening? Absolutely. <quote-05>The singular emotions of those first summer weeks are indelible in my mind<quote-05>, like the melodies from a favorite record. But I am <quote-06>relieved to have the lyrics<quote-06>, so to speak, secured in writing somewhere: on a thumb drive, in the cloud, inked boldly onto paper and gaffer-taped near the front of the stage.
A part of me wonders, though, if these cheat sheets permit, even ensure, the forgetfulness. <quote-07>Do I allow a textured sequence of moments to fade into emotional viscera once I commit it to the page?<quote-07>
Do either of you remember Dumbledore’s Pensieve from the Harry Potter books? In, like, the fourth book, the Hogwarts’ headmaster goes into his magical armoire or something and pulls out this old-timey wash basin filled with a shimmering liquid. He then places his elder wand just so and extracts from his mind a memory, which he then deposits into the Pensieve. Not only does the Pensieve contentedly store any memory Dumbledore is willing to commit to it, but the artifact allows him to basically return to the moment by dunking his face into the liquid. The catch, of course, is that the memory loses its vivid qualities in Dumbledore’s actual mind once it’s removed like so much seminal fluid. <quote-08>Is something like this happening when I consign a memory to words?<quote-08> Is this such a bad thing? Should I be doing more of this as I get older?
Several years ago, almost for the hell of it, for the challenge or something, I racked my brain to reconstruct all four years of my high school schedule, <quote-09>period by period<quote-09>, and put down the result of my efforts on a mint green sticky note. I have the note here in my office, affixed to the front of a plastic desk organizer, just a foot or so away on a nearby shelf. If I were to look at it—and I sometimes do, for fun—I could imagine the specific walks from classroom to classroom, other kids in my classes, where they sat in relation to me, where I loitered just after lunch ended. But without the core framework on the page before me, I fear that these little memories—these little thrills—would be lost forever.
I think I’d really miss these countless particulars if I could no longer visit them in my memory. Without them our lives would seem flimsy, the product of a mere handful of watershed moments, like a blur too eagerly interpreted, like <quote-10>a hell of wasted years<quote-10>. <quote-11>What a little heaven we can make of our memories!<quote-11>
<pull-quote>blissful little groove I found myself in<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>this one of those only-child, leave-me-the-fuck-alone moments that make you question why i’d feel lonely in empty church hallways?<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>For me to call a day "good" without having two or three hours alone before bed means something pretty spectacular happened.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>our rehearsal dinner<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>the photo of your groomsmen on the street-side bench. who took that? you gave them out to us for christmas, i believe. in my mind the photo was the night of the dinner because i’m wearing a jacket, but the photo is a daytime shot, and i remember the dinner happening after dark.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Pre dusk. I have that photo, as well, here on the window sill just behind my laptop screen. You know how rehearsal dinners go—it takes so much time for people to arrive from out of town, the mingling, gifts, pleasantries, couple making the rounds. We had hours before we finally ate after nightfall, space heaters between our tables with their gas flames. I have a photo of myself sitting at one of those tables, Kristen hugging me from behind. Crazy now to think what her dad learned that same morning. How you all must have relived that day with new-data lenses. This is totally my life the last year or more, since all the shit with Lulo.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>I’d saved to my laptop<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>how now, brown cow?<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>For the more noteworthy occasions, I like to compose from a keyboard. Afterwards I'll handwrite the finished product into whatever card I've earmarked for the particular milestone.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>The singular emotions of those first summer weeks are indelible in my mind<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i’ve heard you mention time and again how, for you, the struggles of marriage are eased by remembrance of the early days of romance with one’s partner. i’ve always sort of fought against this idea in my mind, thinking, yeah, this period is nice to think back on, the ol’ remember-when fiesta for an evening of, say, drinking, but if i can’t find the love now, remembering i had it before ain’t gonna help.<p-comment>
<p-comment>in addition: the romance of this week of remembrance in letter form you gifted kristen seems to come more from the time you put into reconstructing the memories than from the memories themselves--the remembrance made more romantic than the memory. you couldn’t help but have your focus on her at the beginning; your affection for her was out of your hands; you were in free fall. in the reconstruction of the week, however, you were diligent, you were devoted.<p-comment>
<p-comment>as a balm for difficult times, i find i’d sooner reach for my discovery of the vow i’d made—as i was wont to put it—than the free fall that preceded it.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Right. It's more about sourdough bread than any eternal flame.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>relieved to have the lyrics<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>relieved is interesting. when it isn't the objective truth of the remembered moment that matters so much as the found feeling, why relieved? as if the tangible somehow lasted longer than the intangible, as if meaning were something that could be lost.<p-comment>
<p-comment>i will again juxtapose the mental with the physical artifact. take the gi joe display case you built over the holiday. the case or the joes: which takes care of which? i can't help but feel the joes take care of the case.<p-comment>
<p-comment>i'm reminded of how conch logs the recipes for her annual holiday parties. i have such reverence for the spines of those recipe books on the shelf. so i agree with you that artifacts, both physical and mental, are indeed important.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Right. You need the recipe and the starter dough.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I've spent many nights sleeping in the tiny twin bed in Murph's childhood bedroom. Murph keeps sourdough starters everywhere.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>When I was younger and my Joes started falling apart, I always told myself that one day I'd fix them all. It was nice to make good on a promise for that kid.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>Do I allow a textured sequence of moments to fade into emotional viscera once I commit it to the page?<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>out, damned spot: the poverty of the literary mind. i mean, it’s not without its appeal. i’d attend the lecture.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>Is something like this happening when I consign a memory to words?<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>might the pensieve be a comment on the nature of voluntary memory? brain science tells us a memory recalls the last conjuring of it, not the event itself. in this sense, forgotten objects regained by involuntary memory are necessarily truer to their original form.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>period by period<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>fucking amazing. i'm thinking of sitting in spanish with my red super whatever-it-was-called plastic jug, freshly filled. where'd we get those from anyway? we must've had spanish after lunch, but was that junior or senior year? i can't recall.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>X-Treme Gulp, 7-11.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Senior Year: AP Gov/Econ, AP Art History, AP Studio Art, H Theater IV, 2nd Lunch, AP Spanish, AP Lit<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>we shared 4 of 6 classes, looks like. 5 if i took ap gov, but i can’t recall. i for sure didn’t take the test if i did.<p-comment>
<p-comment>studio art? the fuck was that? that must have been my ap calc.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Reading that schedule breakdown blew the barn door open in my memory farm, buddy. So many sights and smells suddenly running out of the barn. <p-comment>
<p-comment>Like AP Art History, a class we three shared: Mme Oyler singling me out and having me suddenly escorted out of the room by a proctor, only to arrive at the principal's office to learn I was to spend the last month of high school, at her request, there in the administration office during second period. For a reason she only disclosed to me when I dared visit her after the final bell of high school rang that June afternoon.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>hoke!? what?! why do i recall none of this.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>My theory then and now: she was genuinely smitten with you. You reminded her of her son too, I remember her saying once.<p-comment>
<p-comment>But she was enamored with all of us at the start of that year; it was really a great class early on. We got too friendly with her around the two-thirds mark, though, and she started to resent us, and you in particular. The ugly turn had a lot to do with her insecurities from teaching beyond her comfort zone—her first year teaching the Art History course.<p-comment>
<p-comment>As for AP Gov't/Econ, Wuck, I'm fairly certain you were in that class. There exists a photo from the end of the school year with you, me, Cooter, and Gwalt playing Big Two in the back corner.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>That last day, she broke down and wept when I visited her in the classroom, just as she was cleaning up to leave. She told me how she'd go home and cry at length to her (second) husband, at how deep my "scorn" towards her "cut" her. My "lack of respect." She could expect that from the other boys (you all), she said, but from Chris? <p-comment>
<p-comment>I was like, Huh? Disrespect? When?<p-comment>
<p-comment>I've learned a lot since then about what was going on inside adolescent me:<p-comment>
<p-comment>My parents had a very unhappy marriage. My dad travelled around the world a lot, too. And I was a very sensitive, emotionally attentive boy. So I became my mother's surrogate partner, emotionally. I was raised to know—immediately, subconsciously, automatic as eye contact—how to be an emotional peer to a grown woman, how to meet her needs in a hundred tiny, daily interactions. Without even knowing I'm doing it.<p-comment>
<p-comment>So after establishing this invisible, inappropriate rapport with Mme Oyler, whenever I'd turn away from her and laugh with my classmates, the way any teenage boy in class would do, it stung in a deeper place inside her, I think. And she struck back.<p-comment>
<p-comment>This kinda dynamic happened with several of my female teachers growing up.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>You were pretty fucking dreamy, Hoke, ngl.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>a hell of wasted years<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i often think back on my life in NY like this. i think by definition, our adult life must consist of so many watershed moments, so many broader strokes, versus the rapid and intense swings of the pendulum from one reach to the other in youth. it requires a greater effort on our part to instill an event with a sense of importance.<p-comment>
<p-comment>remain curious, look outward, see miracles.<p-comment>
<p-comment>what if we best protect our memories through making new ones?<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Right. What good is the starter dough if you're not constantly baking new loaves?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>yeah, makes sense<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>What a little heaven we can make of our memories!<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Maybe we're creating a little heaven for ourselves, along the lines you describe here, during this hellish—or least lousy—year?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>to be honest, i'm struggling with this idea of memories as sourdough starter. although i love the application of the metaphor when applied to wholly wonderful memories, i'm finding it troublesome when applied to those more nuanced—those more ethically complex. because it's often these memories that more easily persist.<p-comment>
<p-comment>for instance, how am i to square my all-in take on evangelical christianity—my very-real-at-the-time love for jesus—with the vapidity of the doctrine, with my present awareness of the childhood that was denied me as a result. i wonder if a part of my childhood didn't begin until the formation of our friendships in high school. remember the video we have of us in the supermarket, murph? we're getting toilet paper to destroy hoke’s house; i’m zit-faced in that silly blue fisherman’s hat. i feel like i’m watching a five year old, my excitement is so unvarnished.<p-comment>
<p-comment>should i question whether murph has the best metaphor for how i am to appreciate and understand my life? what i refuse to question is my love for him, or his for me, but our experiences are so often at odds: our love lives, our career paths, and our personal losses; our childhoods and our lives now.<p-comment>
<p-comment>i can apply the sourdough analogy to a great many things, including my love for sourdough! i have no doubt this is why you reached for it, murph. the last time i flew in and stayed at your house, a fresh loaf awaited me on the kitchen island!<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>From a certain perspective, my sourdough analogy is very much in line with what Hoke said earlier about magic and discipline. I wouldn't apply the same holy diligence to bad memories; that would be masochistic.<p-comment>
<p-comment>I so badly want to type the right thing here because you've been so lovably honest just now. I feel a bit like I felt when you had your miscarriage scare. I want to try a hundred responses and only build upon the ones that work for you.<p-comment>
<p-comment>I'll just say I love you lots, man. I wish I could reach through the years and give every evolving moment of you a reassuring high-five from the future.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I agree with Murph: you've been so lovably open and honest here, Wuck. It answers so many of my questions, and speaks to the early Wuck I was driving at months ago when we started these letters. The childhood that was denied you, the emptiness of doctrine—those things were connected to a devoutness, a deep, pure sincerity of heart in little Wuck. <p-comment>
<p-comment>I can see why irony, detachment, dryness, even constant intellectual analysis and doubt would be trustworthy dispositions and sure defenses against ever falling into a foolish sincerity that could again lead you into loss of faith and self. I can see why embracing that all-in, whole-heartedly-believing Young Wuck feels like such a complicated and even threatening move.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Love you, bud.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
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<pull-quote>the salt and crunch of tortilla chips, the cold tang of salsa<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>the most prized possession in a debbie webber assembled lunch sack was the little tupperware tub of salsa and plastic sandwich bag of chips. if it was tacos for dinner last night, you could be sure it was a burrito with chips and salsa today. the best!<p-comment>
<p-comment>at the end of lunch, when the remaining chips were no longer of practical scooping size, i’d pour them in with the dregs of the salsa and get myself a plastic spoon. as a young boy the nature of the tortilla chip was further revealed to me when once i tried to save this crunchy mini-salad for later. such a disappointment.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Man, the smell of chlorine from the towel around my head, the salt on my fingers from the chips and salsa my mom left out for me on the white plastic table--it's all coming back now.<p-comment>
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