“What high school did you go to?”
St. Louis, MO is a big little city, and that one question is designed to elicit everything anyone needs to know about you. Based on your response, they can divine your socioeconomic status, how you’ve fared compared to the local caste system, and basically, who you are. It’s a shortcut to find out who you know…and who knows you.
I worked the AA steps. I made amends. But sometimes you just need to pack up your old life and head out west to start anew. After four decades in St. Louis, where success is measured by how many DUIs your uncle earned or who has the biggest Precious Moments collection on their entertainment centers, my time there was dunzo. While everyone else was planted like gnomes on a cluttered Lemay lawn, I bolted for freedom and love (not necessarily in that order). One moment I was listening to relatives bicker over the benefits of Michelob Ultra versus Bud Light in a Schnucks parking lot, and the next I was in Scottsdale, AZ, wondering if sun exposure could cure a southside Irish Catholic case of survivor’s guilt.
You know how your NPC neighbor responds with “living the dream” each morning when you greet him while walking the pugs? That dude is annoying, but I’m legit livin’ the dream. Scottsdale has 300 days of sunshine per year, the kind of place where even your mailman does yoga and has a skincare routine replete with those gold strips under their eyes. My wife makes heads turn without trying, and my son has mastered guitar and drums without effort. I read books and write things no one asked for. Life is golden. That’s Scottsdale, and still, I was miserable.
Why, you might ask? Two words: Guilt. Shame.
While I traipsed around the desert like a reborn jackrabbit, most of my friends from back in the day weren’t doing shit other than the same shit they’d always done. My parents were decaying in place. Only in their mid-sixties, they were falling apart like Shein clothes after three washes. And my brother was breaking down, but less gracefully. Conversations with my parents always felt like a guided tour through calamity.
“Oh, you ran a marathon? So, long story short, the doctor says I need another surgery, but your father’s foot doesn’t work anymore, so we’re pushing it back. Hope I live that long.”
Or there was this ditty, “Your uncle had a stroke. We’re giving your aunt some cash so she doesn’t lose the apartment. I saw your new bathroom online—nice tile! We don’t even have a pot to piss in, but don’t worry. We’ll survive.”
Cue the dirge of Midwestern passive-aggression.
Every few months, I flew back to STL for my penance: raking leaves, helping decorate for holidays I didn’t believe in, and trying to earn self-worth through self-flagellation. Over the years, I broached the possibility of selling each of our houses. I suggested pooling resources, so we could buy a new house with a guest house. Then, we’d always be nearby and available to help them with anything they needed. Those overtures were met with, “Oh, we could never afford to live out there.”
I let that one go and suggested we hire a home health aid to visit them two or three times per week. My mom shot back, “There’s no way we could pay for that.”
After assuring her that we’d happily incur the cost, she snarked, “Nononono, you save your money for trips and remodels or give them money you would have spent on us to your uncle. We wouldn’t want anyone in our house anyway.”
“But you could use the help, Mom”, I replied.
“Don’t be silly. I just worry your dad and I will both be dead in here, and no one will find us. And that’s fine, but who will feed Baby Kitty then?” she said.
Right. Of course. The cat.
Baggage on the flight back to AZ always felt heavier. Everything did.
At some point, the cancerous guilt metastasized, and I became insufferable. In my eyes, every new pair of shoes my wife bought was a punch to the face of working-class America. Every time our kid ordered salmon instead of chicken tenders, I imagined my parents eating canned dog food or slurping cereal with water. The internal Rube Goldberg of rage got rolling.
Eventually, my wife had enough. While I pissed on everyone’s parade, she interrupted, “Why don’t you go camping this weekend? B and I will see a movie or something.”
Translation: Take your martyrdom elsewhere.
So, I drove to Prescott with a rooftop tent and a cooler full of regret. After texting Lesia and B some proof-of-life photos and a few sweet-nothings from the campsite while cooking spaghetto, Lesia called. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t even yelling. That made it worse.
“You don’t live in St. Louis anymore. You left. It’s over. Either you leave that guilt in the woods, or you bring it back and lose us, too.”
Well. That cleared things up. Unexpected? Sure, but I knew her position was valid. Still, I felt a blanket of ennui wrap itself around me and worm its way into my mitochondria. The thought of losing my family caused me to lose my appetite, so I put the food away and went for a run around Watson Lake. It’s a stunning place with huge boulders, silent water, and the occasional duck with an attitude. Two miles in, I saw a fawn standing in the mud. He wasn’t stuck. Just... lingering. Like he was waiting for permission to exist.
He didn’t move. I got closer. Still, nothing. I gazed into his innocent eyes for what seemed liked 50 years but was probably only five minutes. Now I was so close that I could see the moist texture of his nose and marvel at how infrequently he blinked.
Now I was within three feet of him. “You can go,” I whispered. “You don’t have to stay here. It’s OK for you to leave.”
I kept talking. Coaxing. Begging. A heavily tattooed middle-aged man in neon shorts, crying, talking to a deer. “You’re just a kid. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. If you stay, something will eat you.”
That’s when I realized I wasn’t talking to the deer.
I was talking to 20-year-old me. The one who thought staying was loyalty and leaving was betrayal. I couldn’t force the deer to move. Just like I couldn’t force my parents to change. I could only let go and move forward. For my benefit and for the sake of those closest to me. Today.
I ran on, feeling lighter, like I’d shed a Cameback full of bricks. Around mile four, I turned around and FWOOSH! Out of the trees burst a full deer family: buck, doe, fawn. They crossed the trail like some kind of woodland benediction.
They strode toward the horizon, never looking back. They just kept going.
So did I.