Road To Norilsk
Adulthood is weird. One day you’re seventeen, fucking off without a care in the world, and then the next you’re approaching thirty, ruminating on intangibles: rent, therapy exercises, plane ticket costs. Or deciding between seemingly impossible choices: a $40 versus a $120 haircut, whether to or not to disown a restaurant, spending all day in bed or putting aside an hour to roam around a museum.
It is hard not to reminisce on the past, on how easy it was. That’s not to say adolescence came without its challenges: puberty, heartbreaks, struggles with deafness. But the majority of my childhood, really, was all about chocolate milkshakes, ding-dong-ditch and building forts. Now, it’s all just so goddamn hard. Not necessarily in a bad way, though. Life, now, just requires more… situational awareness, both figuratively and literally.
There are times when something undesirable happens—a car accident, financial hardships, a somewhat cheating of death… or a really bad injury (yes, in that order)—that I’d like to go back. Just to take a break for a while, you know?
When I think of my childhood, several images appear. But one in particular sticks out…
I am twelve, and it is eight o’clock in the morning. There is slatted sun shooting through the window. I smell cinnamon rolls, and then the daily realization that it is still summer dawns onto me. I leap out of bed and beeline to the kitchen. On the stove, in a brown ceramic pan, there are eight cinnamon rolls. My mother is sweating and tells me she ran three miles, “across the bridge and back.” I congratulate her, and I do mean it, because it is summer and there are eight cinnamon rolls and I am happy. I have eaten enough that my mother has to make a second batch. It is now nine. I change into my bathing suit and leave the backdoor open as I run out and jump into the pool.
Recently, I have tried to replicate that same simple joy and nostalgia, and I think I am succeeding…
I am twenty-six, and it is noon. And it is summer indeed. I am wearing jeans and a blue shirt and ripped Vans. I visit the local museum and familiarize myself once again with exhibits of Chinese customs of celebrations of life and death and family, with exhibits of Indigenous people and their legacies and American settlers and their infrastructures, and the thing that surprises me most is the perfectly calculated balance between objectivity and subjectivity. And of course, lest we forget the customary Salem exhibit stocked with a scandalous murder and a Hocus Pocus movie poster. After I’ve had my fill, I stop at a rooftop bar and have two beers while squinting at the skyline. That afternoon I visit my friend at her apartment where we complain about the heat and discuss a postponed 2000s-themed party of which she will be the host. And then we walk to a cider bar where she regrets her first drink (a slushie with the aftertaste of medicine) and where we talk about my girlfriend’s unfortunate technical difficulties regarding her laptop; about friendship dynamics; about general annoyances with life.
Days like those remind me that adulthood isn’t all that bad. There is a lot of great stuff. Stuff like having more money. Understanding nuances. Drunken late-night walks with friends. Soloing it to the theatre. Renting your first car. Cookies for breakfast, cake for dinner. Dual conversations about suicide and small town lore. Possibilities of marriage, possibilities of children. Dreams that have become realized, dreams that have changed course. Elevated fashion taste. Increased culinary ventures while maintaining unchanged preferences. Destination vacations, destination weddings. Becoming familiar with sadness, appreciating happiness.