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Blinding Clarity
Karen Mooradian
I found myself alive, really alive, and realized I would be at home wherever I may voyage; my signature, my heritage, accompanying me along the journey.
It’s funny, the things I remember about the end of my fifteenth year, and the beginning of my sixteenth. Fifteen is a funny age for a girl, sometimes downright hilarious. It is a time of conflict and confusion but above all-creation. I was young and with a mindset common amongst young people, I was immortal. With a big heart and an eagerness for life, I had convinced myself that manipulation rhymes with reason, that I would never die, that time does not exist. Death can be outsmarted, outran, outnumbered.
The thing about immortality is that you never die, that flying monster with two deformed hands never catches up to you. If you never die, the cycle of life would argue that you’re never really alive, and if you’re not alive-if you know, or even think that you’ll be on this earth forever-life loses a lot of its mystery and charm. I thought I was immortal because, well, I didn’t know any better. I was living a life surrounded by familiar people in familiar ways that were great and comfortable and made me think, and wish even, that life would stay that way forever. When death showed up, I learned otherwise. Death happens. I wasn’t immortal. And my perfect, eternal family would be no exception to the cycle. That was okay with me. Suddenly I was alive, there in the moment, empowered by my newfound mortality, and the silent gifts of life, that are all around you everyday if you choose to seek them out, began to dance and sing to me.
It was May 2004 when my family of six--one mom and five children--departed from a Detroit airport heading for the Dominican Republic. My mother decided a vacation was in high order for us to recuperate from the winter storms that buried our father. We left Detroit rainy and gray and arrived at a terminal in the Caribbean with bird inhabited plants for walls, stone floors, and thatched roofs of hay. Airport employees were clad in loose hemp clothing, tan in color, and flip flops on their darkened feet that sang songs of contentment with each step-the conflicting flips and flops complimenting each other with famous harmony.
Outside, the sun was center stage, like a fine actor receiving the full bodied attention of the audience without demanding it, seemingly oblivious to its own blinding shine and burning aura. The sky, as a never-ending stage, complimented its star actor with shades of uninterrupted blue; as if it stole all hints of sorrow from all of mankind, raised it up, and sheltered everybody from their own despair with the collective despair of mankind that, from a safe distance, really was beautiful, and uniting. The air was warm and danced with a movement congruent to that of a mother’s womb.
Maybe I was jet lagged but at the time I didn’t know where I was, or how I got there. The land was foreign, but somehow felt very much like home, like a child’s idea of home through the wet nostalgic eyes of an adult mind. I didn’t really know where I was, but I was there, right then-and it was beautiful.
We took a cab through the Caribbean villages made of hut homes where poor families, dressed in happy tattered rags, lived together. Small children stood barefoot on the side of the small dirt roads we traveled down and waved with excitement and curiosity as we drove by and their happiness infected my bones. They would die, too, but they were alive then, and happy with their callused feet and dirty hands-souvenirs of the breath in their lungs.
We arrived at the resort, all inclusive, on the Northern Atlantic Ocean. After hauling our luggage up three flights, we reached our rooms. The balconies stood above stretched miles of sand and beyond that, infinite blue waters-peaceful with crashing angry waves that were comforted and calmed by the motherly hands of the shoreline. I had to live it, the shining blue abyss was beckoning me, inviting me into its wonder.
I ran down three flights of stairs--my younger sister Leslie close behind. I felt each warm stone stair as my feet met them, one after the other. I felt the sand, each grain, wrap around my toes and guide me toward the ocean, and then I was all encompassed with crystal liquid clarity. Waves crashed around my body with more fever and fury the further out I swam, over my head, knocking me around. I was there, with my sister, and we were alive. I bobbed up after a wave launched over my head and when I met air again, I was blind. The ocean had eaten the glasses right off my face, as if to remind me that the scenery of life should never be taken for granted. Leslie noticed, and there we were--in the middle of the Atlantic, laughing, laughing, laughing.
The last time I had laughed that hard was the day I received my drivers permit. My dad was a simple man; he found joy in life’s simple pleasures and had no real need for great flashy things. He did, however, love sports cars. When I was fourteen, he had bought a brand new BMW, black with a soft top, and he asked me the night I got my permit to drive him to the restaurant where our Chinese order was waiting for us. I jumped at the opportunity, and the power I felt when he handed me his keys was surpassed only by the feeling I had when I opened the door and heard it seal shut after me. I buckled up, as did my father in the passenger seat, turned the key, and gripped the wheel. I felt equally nervous as I did powerful as I reversed out of the garage and into the world.
Well, it was pretty dark out that night and when I saw the glowing light, Mings Chinese, I cut the wheel. I didn’t realize I cut into nothing until there we were, in a ditch, his car at a 45 degree angle. He must have sensed my anxiety because he just reached over and patted my hand that was still gripped to the steering wheel, and laughed his big hearty laugh. There we were, both laughing until we cried.
The waves kept crashing and I could see the world more clearly than I ever had my entire life. They say you feel small when you stand beside an ocean, but I felt larger than life. Another wave crashed into me, and I must have had my mouth open, because all I could taste was salt, and it was delicious.
The sky blanketed me above and I was home, right where I belonged, if only for the time being. But the time was being, and I found myself ready to live, until I’m ready to die…my father’s greatest signature.
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