Here i am again, knowing if i don't start with this one i will never really be able to start, or that is to say, start at the right place.A story that happened roughly 82 years before my birth, 40 years before the birth of my father. It starts with, well i don't know what it started with. But in my mind it always starts with my grandmother as a young girl, 8 years old or less, standing on the stairs, overhearing her parents. It's always on the stairs.
Her father, my great grandfather was informing her mother that an asteroid was hurling toward the earth. There was no doubt about it, it may as well have knocked on the front door already. I cannot tell you how my great grandmother reacted, as in my mind i am not looking at her, maybe she was smarter than the masses, maybe she descended into fear with the others. My grandmother was one of many children, and i can't tell you where they were at this time. But i can see her standing on the dark stairs, backing toward the wall on strong little tidal waves of this news. There was no undertow, only strong waves. They pushed her up the stairs, padding quietly against that complicated stair carpet held down by so many little golden rods.
Alone in her room the news only loomed bigger. Maybe her parent's worlds were big enough for a thing like this to shake it, maybe not. But her's was too young, too easily crushed, and this comet, this meteor, this whatever was right over her head. What is a comet even? Does it matter? It's going to come down right on your head and that's it, you're done.
Where was it?
Could she see it?
It was probably too close too see by then anyway, sneaking up right behind her, right in her blindspot. Looking for her. Looking. For Her. Nuts to this waiting game she had no use for it. Maybe her parents and brothers and sisters could sit waiting to be crushed to death but not her no thank you. Do you accept your fate? Or do you say 'no thank you' the only way you can? Standing up on pointed toe, on the wooden headboard of the bed my father would years later sleep in, i don't know what she thought.
Not really atleast, i know what her general plan is, or atleast i like to think i do, i like to think she did. I think she planned to land on her head. Hoped to atleast. Flip bottom over top like a bowling pin and crack down on the floor and beat that meteor at it's own game. She thought it was certain i suppose, and the waiting was cruel and unusual punishment. But when her legs straightened out, perched on the hard narrow wood of the bedframe, and she took flight i dont know what she was thinking, i cannot see what she saw. I cannot pass my thoughts through any of their synapses. I have stopped wondering if i wold want to. She fell, 'flat on her back' she once told me. I dont know if it's true, but i like to think the others in that house heard the single, one handed clap and just for a second, assumed their doom had arrived.
