When Kyle was in pre-school at Garden Day Montessori 3 blocks from our house, one of his very best friends was a boy at the school named Nicky. For three years, they played together at Garden Day, perhaps the two best athletes in the school of fifteen or so 2-5 year olds. They mastered the tire swing and slide together, ran faster than the others in games of chase, and decided to take Kuk Sool Won Korean Martial Arts together. They were in the Kuk Sool Mighty Mights class. Kyle's favorite part was playing "Duck/Jump" at the end of each lesson, when Sir would try to hit each kid in the head and feet with a swimming pool noodle. They were both spunky, funny, mischievous little boys, Nicky a little tougher and a little quieter than Kyle. They shared dozens of playdates at each others' houses. I think Nicky did a couple of sleepovers at our house, and Kyle loved playing at Nicky's on Parker Street where his dad's very cool stone carving studio faced the street in an old storefront protecting the attached house they were totally remodeling themselves. The studio and the morphing new home was paradise for spunky, mischievous boys, loaded with hammers, mallets, chisels, power tools and big slabs of beautiful stones. Kyle was a movie addict even then, and his favorite was Toy Story (before he discovered Star Wars). He watched the original on VHS enough times to memorize the dialogue. So, when my mom got tickets to Toy Story On Ice, Kyle could barely contain himself. She got four tickets: one for herself, one for me, one for Kyle and one left for a friend. Kyle bestowed his one precious ticket on Nicky.
On March 8, 1997, we got snow cones, cotton candy and Buzz Lightyear wrist beams, and all four of us watched and hooted in wide-eyed wonder. The boys watching the show, my mom and I watching the boys. Silly, but it was the most fun my mom and I could remember having together (well, I admit, during those years, everything I did with Kyle was the most fun I could remember having).
On March 8, 2011 my mom lives at the Rhoda Goldman Plaza on the 4th floor in the Alzheimer's Unit. She doesn't remember Toy Story on Ice, and she doesn't know that her grandson died in a car accident. Her doctors tell us that she'll be upset, but then won't remember why, and will keep re-experiencing the shock of learning of his death.
On March 8, 2011 Nick's dad, Chris, begins to paint on the letters that he will, in a few days, begin to chisel out of Kyle's black granite headstone. He tells me that he doesn't listen to music while he works, he thinks about watching Nick and Kyle through his storefront window, four years old, playing on the sidewalk, then scampering through his studio to the house to get a popsickle. They were just playing here, and now I'm carving his headstone.
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