Poetry
Poetry: Bitter sweet
- Details
- By KJ Hooten
- Monday, February 27, 2012
- Hits: 477
Should'na started out the day listening to Simple Minds sing
Don't You Forget about Me
Featured in the movie, The Breakfast Club
My family and I saw it
And enjoyed it
And loved the song
We lived in our "perfect house"
An old stone house with character
Across the street from where the kids
Had gone to Open School — kindergarten and first grade many years before
After living in various parts of town
And the kids attending classes in various buildings
(Open grew and shrank; changed locations several times)
We moved to this house
We lived "within walking distance"
Of downtown, the library, a community college and a university;
Museums, and theaters
And best of all, three blocks away from the high school they attended
My family lived in that house for 18 years
I lived there for eight
(I had to move on — away from the marriage
But not away from parenting)
Today, 23 years later, I attended a book talk at the library
Driving home — across town — I looked
At the old house
No one I know lives there now
I noticed that one of the front windows
Is boarded up
The house is occupied; I think
There is usually a car in the driveway
And it "feels" like someone is living there
I'm thrown back in time
Before we saw The Breakfast Club
I picked my husband up from work one evening
The kids met us at the door
With "good news and bad news"
We wanted the bad news first
Our daughter had been sitting on the
"bun warmer" — the wooden cover over the heat register
Under the window —
And leaned back too hard
She broke the window
The good news was that we had a call from
Family in Florida
So we called them back
No
It was more bad/sad news
My husband's beloved grandfather had died
We went to the funeral
We fixed the window
A few years later a cousin from Indiana brought his new
Wife to meet us
We sat talking in front of that window
When suddenly a man with a clown nose pressed his
Face up against it
It was a favorite teacher from the school
Taking the kids and friends on a scavenger hunt
They needed a picture of kids in a bathtub
And had chosen ours
The house; the area always felt like home to me
Even when I no longer lived there
In his senior year, one of my son's friends committed suicide
They played Don't You Forget about Me at his funeral
My son said there was not a dry eye in the house
The song pulls me back to the noisy and quiet times when my family was working and growing
The song pulls me back to the angst-ridden movie about teenagers
The song pulls me back to the sadness of the young man's life cut too short
He was found in a closed garage with the car motor turned on
He was found lying on the floor
Just short of the door
People thought he may have changed his mind
Too late
It's too late to go back
To live in that house again
To look through that window
I drive home through the broken city
To my injured, but still alive neighborhood
The downtown is breathing with new restaurants
And activities
The surrounding sections are spotty
Some safe; some scary
Hope lingers
The library is warm with loving people
"Family"
But all the branches have closed
I pass the stone house
And notice for the first time
The new roof
Hope lingers
But I don't know if that's enough to keep me here.
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K.J. Hooten is a retired interpreter for the deaf in the Flint school system. She has lived in or near Flint since 1970. Besides writing poetry, she has published two children's books, The Egg Nanny Tales and Stories to Amuse the Kids that can be found on amazon.com.
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