3 Moments by Jim Etchison

He thinks about many things. He thinks about the crisp outline of Pikes Peak out his back window. The air so crystalline that the peak seems only a few feet away. He thinks about the disk golf course a few seconds down the road. He spent many hours there -- especially toward the end. He misses the stark contrast created between the light and shadow. At that high elevation, the thin air did not diffuse the light, so every morning was a painting. But he thinks about three things that are more than thoughts; they are constant recollections. As if, during those three moments, the whirring frames of time broke like a weak spot in a reel of film. The first moment is his daughter's little feet in pink cordueroy pants kicking up behind her as she giggles. He is chasing her through the backyard because it is time for her nap. She is laughing and he is crying because he knows he will never forget this moment. He knows this moment will never occur again, since she will be leaving soon and he will stay to sell the house. After she is gone, he thinks she will never look back at him with the same laughing eyes. He is probably right. The grass is the greenest of greens -- a green that can only been found under Colorado lighting. The sky is as blue as his daughter's eyes. At this moment, his son, not quite a year old, is sleeping. This boy will not feel as much pain because the father and he are practically strangers. Why this moment will haunt him, the father doesn't know. But he is right. It will haunt him. Who he is in this moment will haunt him. Who his daughter is will haunt him. She has just turned 3 years old, and, for all her giggling, she is perfect. He is 33, as if some numerologist were trying to dazzle him with metaphors. Though she laughs, she knows that something big is wrong. In fact she has recently told him that she likes her room and doesn't want to leave it. He realized, when he heard that, that her mother had been explaining things to her. The look on her face will haunt him. She turns back back to look at him -- ecstatic in laughter. It is so funny to her that she is running from him and that he must chase her. She is mostly unaware of the changes that will confront her. But still there is a certain frantic energy to her stride. She feels exhiliarated by her ability to run from what she fears. Her mouth is wide open and smiling. She will soon forget this moment. He is thinking that If only he could love the little girl's mother. Then, this moment would be right and good. But he can't do what would be convenient in this case. He would wonder later how he can have so many thoughts about one immeasurable instant in time. But, in fact, the more he thinks about it, the more he he finds in this moment. For he has come to realize that it is in this moment that his heart is beginning to break. His heart is breaking because now he understands the pain he will always feel. This moment will always be with him. And pain is similar to pleasure in that the anticipation often has a more profound effect than the feeling itself. In this moment, he began to anticipate his pain. All his life he has used the term "broken-hearted" in various ways. Like most other people, he used the term without fully understanding its meaning. He could never have understood what it means to be broken hearted without learning that life is not a sequence of good and bad decisions, or right and wrong events, but inevitabilities. When all the atoms in the universe were first set in motion, they pointed to this moment. This moment was inevitable, and realizing that has broken his heart. The second moment that haunts him happened 16 weeks later. His house will soon be sold, and he has flown to the city where his daughter lives so that he can find a place to live near her. He has not seen her in 16 weeks. He has walked up the back driveway of his wife's parents' home (where she and his daughter and son now live). He has been to this place many times, but now it is not a welcoming place. He is now a pariah here. He is no longer respected or appreciated. He is allowed here only because the courts have given him access. The father is filled with anticipation of seeing his daughter and son. He is afraid they will not remember him. He is also afraid that they will hate him for what he has done. He stands at the back door that he used to open without knocking upon. This time he knocks. There is a smell of night-blooming jasmine from the garden alongside the drive. He hears the words "Come in, Daddy." The words are spoken by his wife. This comforts him. He opens the door, and sees his daughter. This moment of reconnection is his second haunting moment. The first moment that haunted him was the beginning of the anticipation of pain. But this moment -- this second moment -- is the moment when the pain comes to fruition. Yes, he is filled with joy at seeing his daughter again. He loves her more than anyone he's ever loved. But it is the sight of her that ruins him, and here is why: Her mother has dressed his daughter in her most beautiful maroon velvet dress. She has been bathed and scrubbed, her hair neatly combed and festooned with a beautiful floral hairclip. She stands like a prom date -- looking up at the man she remembers in a very special way. He can tell by her face that she had not forgotten him, but only forgotten what he looked like. She was looking at him to regain familiarity. Something deep inside her knew that this man was Daddy and that Daddy was important to her. But what ruins his heart is that this beautiful little girl somehow thinks that if she looks her utmost prettiest -- he will love her more. He won't understand why he is ruined by this sight until much later, because too much is happening in this moment to understand it. But he is ruined and he knows it, because in a deep place he knows that he is now seeing the result of his actions. He has damaged his daughter. This was the pain he was anticipating. This ruins him. For in this moment, his heart becomes completely and finally broken. And that is the second moment that haunts him. The third moment happens many many years later. This is the moment when his pain ends. It could be said to be a better moment, but he no longer believes that moments are good or bad. They are merely inevitable. In this moment, he is sitting beside his daughter. She is now 19 years old and they are attending a function together. He is now 49 years old. Neither one of them are perfect now, but he still loves her just as much as he always did. She loves him in a mature way now, which is important because only when daughter has her own thoughts and her own feelings can she truly lift the burden of her father. She does not know about the first two moments that haunt her father. She does not remember them. But she does remember Colorado. She remembers the sun and the green grass and the swing set. She remembers photos. But she is not thinking about Colorado. She rarely does, because Colorado is not as important as where she is now. Now she is sitting at the side of a long, fold-out table. There are people milling about and her father is sitting next to her. Her father is telling her about why her mother and he did not stay together. It is a rare topic for them, and they have never covered it more thoroughly than they are now. She can tell it is a difficult story for him to tell. But she is 19 and she feels that she is old enough to hear all the truth about what happened. He tells her most of the truth -- enough of the truth so that she can truly understand what he did, and why. He tells her enough of the truth to expose what he fears most about himself. She asks many questions, and what father and daughter thought would be a short conversation ends up taking many hours. The daughter is not deeply hurt by any of it. It happened too long ago and she is mostly just curious. Then comes the third moment that haunts him. It is the moment that the father looks at his daughter and sees that she understands. She understands that he never thought her mother was anything less than a good woman. She understands that her father is nothing less than a good man. She understands that what happened was inevitable, and that even though her father took a path that hurt her, there was no other path for him to take. She understands this, and it is all okay. And in this moment, he realizes that his heart had never needed to be broken, that his remorse should have been resolve, and that he did not need to be haunted by those first two moments for all those years. Because now, his daughter has gained understanding. And now, his daughter agrees that his decision was the best for all involved, including her. She expresses this understanding in some way. She either expresses it with a smile, or she expresses it with a few words. The father does not know how she expresses it, because this third moment has not happened yet. And it might not happen -- which is why this third moment haunts him. In fact, he is only 34 now. He is alone with his decision. He lives alone in a quiet apartment in the very back of a small apartment complex. Very few of his neighbors speak English. He has bought a cat and named it Frieda. Frieda does not sleep on his bed with him any more, but chooses to sleep under the table in the dining area. At night he eats microwave dinners, drinks beer, listens to music, and tries not to think about his life. He works in a cuibicle that is so quiet he can hear his computer mouse rolling along his mousepad. He can hear typing four cubicles away. He occasionally hears sanitary phones ringing in other cubicles. Husbands and wives calling to confirm dinner plans. Each day after work he walks over the pristing car lot to his car. The sunlight in this city casts a flat palour on the earth. White lines on the car lot meet the blacktop in an ordinary way. There is no vibrance to the light. When he is about 20 feet away from his car, he presses the car alarm button on his keyring -- and he imagines the double chirp from his green car to be a friendly voice. Two short syllables that embody all the kind words he needs to hear. "Drive safe!" "How do?" "Hi there." "Good man." Sometimes he hits the button twice in succession so it emits three-syllable chirps. "It's okay." "It's okay." "It's okay." Copyright 1998, Jim Etchison