Little I Desire

Thee sunlight could only be seen above the roof lines.

Like a Magritte painting.

We were standing in the street — my mother, my father, my brother Robert and me — because the house was too small for what I was about to say. The neighbors were close enough to hear. The street was the only private room we had.

My mother had a creased forehead. Already worried. My father, a tight lip. Ready to listen. My brother Robert was mad. He already knew what I was up to.

I had summoned my small family to ask the impossible.

The son of a carpenter and a candy factory worker was going to art school.

I said, "If you do this, you'll never have to do anything else for me ever again."

I meant every word of it.

People who know this story think I was brave. But I wasn't trying to be brave. I wasn't even thinking about risk. I just knew, the way you know some things before you can explain them, that my life was on the other side of that ask.

I've spent a long time thinking about wants.

The stated ones and the real ones underneath.

I wanted to go to art school. What I really wanted was a life I could claim as mine. One I chose on purpose, not inherited by default.

I wanted to marry a kind and beautiful girl. What I really wanted was someone to fully share myself with. The ugly parts. The tender ones. The unknown ones — even to me.

I wanted to run marathons. What I really wanted was to grow old without surrendering the ordinary miracles: stooping to tie my shoes, carrying my Trader Joe's bags, picking something up off the floor.

I wanted to retire. What I really wanted was to know I could. One is an ending, the other is a choice you make every morning.

Beneath all of them was the same hunger.

To live a life that was actually mine.

My father used to walk my brother and me down the middle of the street. Not the sidewalk. The middle. As if showcasing us for a role we had already won.

I didn't know it then, but I was learning something.

That the street could be a stage. That you didn't need a proper room to say an important thing. Sometimes all you needed was the impossible light.

And mean it.