OCR Text |
Show 75 That's how long we stared at each other, with the occasional interruption of a cousin or uncle walking by to ask me what it was like to be an adult. My mom finally came by and bailed me out of there by picking up Elie and taking her away. My mom was still wearing her Christmas sweater and I wondered how she wasn't sweating. Once she found Holly's husband to take Elie, we left. It felt like diving to emerge from the basement and house, wave goodbye without making eye contact, move fast to the coat rack, and finally out the door and into the cold, black winter air which felt new, and open. When we got back to my parents' house, I went straight down into the basement where my old room was. There were a few new pictures on the wall in the basement, mostly my brother's pre-mission pictures with suit and nametag, but overall it felt the same. The density of clutter was comparable; there were the same slight scars on the walls from fights with my brother when I was young, the same basement smell. My room looked different than I remembered. It was clean; where my bed used to be there was now a five foot stack of excess mattresses and box springs. Before I left for Arizona, I had sloppily painted over all the punk slogans and practice tags I had written on the walls with marker, and |