“The future is the past returning through another gate.”
– Arnold H. Glasow
Her father had blue eyes and wavy brown hair. He wore glasses that made him seem smart; and he was about certain things, like what he thought of the stars, philosophy, art and people in general. “Watch their eyes,” he would always tell her as she sat on his lap looking out at the stars. “You can tell a lot about people by looking at their eyes.”
Her father’s eyes were glossy and far away. She always wondered where he was in his mind. She wondered why he didn’t want to be with her.
One day he left with his torn bag of clothes, a book, and her mother’s lemon of a car. She likes to think he went where he always used to be in his mind. She never got the chance to find out; she never saw him again.
Her mother said he was never happy. Bitter, she began dating again. There was Johnny the carpenter who secretly adored Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. She never got along with Charlie the banker from New York who couldn’t say coffee and liked to say things like “time heals all wounds” and “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Whatever that meant. But she actually liked Dave from Texas whose words were slow and sweet to her ears. He would take her and her mom outside and point out the constellations – “Look, there’s Orion’s belt and the big dipper! Look!”
They all left. Even Dave, who told her she was his best girl and never to trust boys with cars and never to give up because people have fought for centuries to survive so she can be here.
They all left with their bags. She watched them from the window, wondering where they would go, if they would think of her, why her mom wasn’t enough.
One day she realized the similarities: the glasses that made them look smart, the blue eyes, the wavy brown hair, the ability and need to walk away.
She read that “the future is the past returning through another gate” and she had to wonder why her mother allowed so many men to walk through so many gates, why she didn’t bother to lock these gates, why she let all of the men in their lives leave.
She decided after a while that maybe some people will just never learn.
Dominique Zuniga 