Of teachers, of mothers, of fathers, of monsters.

There may yet be truth in the fact that when we remember something, we're actually only remembering the last time we remembered that event.
I'm not sure who's alive and who's dead now but as the years move on, I can no longer be certain that it happened.  Yet it did.
My teacher in fourth class was a wizened old Lithuanian man who was respected, if not revered, by at least two generations of my siblings before me. He called me Professor Malco. More than likely because I was a smartarse know-it-all a lot of the time. And though his moniker for me implied some small exaltation, he wasn't above giving me four or even six with the cane because he thought I was talking out of turn. Which was almost never true.
One day Teacher X had no sooner walked into the filled classroom than he said without his usual gold-toothed smile, "Professor Malco, would you please follow me?". Our classroom was in the same ancient brick building as the Principal's office - a matter of a few yards, really - but the cloud of uncertainty that hung in the air like death itself made it one of the longest walks of my life. Had I so monstrously done wrong?  Broken or stolen one too many toys?  It was bad enough that the year before I'd had to forfeit a spelling bee prize because the day I was to accept the prize was also the day I was to get the cuts - "six in all" as he liked to call 'em - from Deserthead; the most feared teacher in the whole school because of his soldierly grip when he shook your shoulders and his lead weighted canes. All of this left me with but one choice.  Wag school. And so a precedent was set.
But I digress.
Teacher X ushered me into the Principal's office and to my surprise, I saw my mother standing there, together with my old third class, second class and first class teachers. With so much erudition in that small office, there wasn't a lot of standing room. I had no idea what this was all for. I remember how good it looked outside beyond the window where some kids were weaving cane baskets in the sunlight beneath the large Tannoy poles.
"Mac, the Principal and these teachers want to ask you a few questions and you don't have to say anything you don't want to."  I nodded. Mum worked up around the corner at the local Funny Farm as it was locally known.  She'd been a Domestic there for a few years.  And would remain so for the next two decades.
The Principal began. "Your dad wants to take you off to Perth to live.  Is that true?" I bit my lower lip and nodded. "And you don't want to go?"
I didn't know what to say.
"Malcolm?".
"My friends are here and Mum is here. And Pete and Helen and everyone is here."
"You told Teacher X that your dad had taken you to the police.  Why did he do that?  Were you naughty?".
"I keep walking away to Mum's. But he always finds out and sends the twins to pick me up or gets me along the way."
"And what did the police do?".
"They showed me where the drunk people live at night and told me I'd live there if I didn't stop running away."  There was much slow and deliberate bobbing of heads to all of this.  Keen attention from their faces. I still didn't know what I had done wrong. The Principal felt satisfied with the answers I supplied but the lines on his face only seemed to etch themselves deeper as I spoke.
The Principal nodded to Miss Y, my third class teacher who we all wanted to be hugged by because she was beautiful. And we all wanted to be kissed by her because she smelled nice and was warm all the time.
"Malcolm, would you like to stay here with us?  At this school?"
I nodded slowly, still expecting a trap of some kind.
She continued, "How would you like it if you came to live with me and everyone here except your Mum. Only for a few weeks until your dad went away and the police weren't coming around."
"Why?"
"Because then you could eventually live with your Mum and you wouldn't have your classes disrupted because we could do them with you at home. But you wouldn't be able to tell anyone about it.  Not for a long time. Could you do that, do you think?".
It was then that I saw my Mother's tears. She didn't encourage an answer one way or the other.  She just let the tears slowly build and fall. I looked from face to grave face.
I saw immediately that I would no longer have to wait three weekends of every month just to spend time with Mum and my siblings and friends for forty eight short hours.  I saw a secure place for my pushbike up in Mum's flats, in my mind's eye. I saw days spent with creeks, waterfalls, eels and wolf spiders, skateboards, office blocks and new construction sites with sand piles with buried brick shards.
I saw bus rides into town for five cents and low drifting nimbus clouds of cigarette smoke in front of the Friday night telly as we all shushed each other trying to watch the movie in that tiny flat. I saw everyone laughing in the flat. In all the flats.  Friends from Hungary, Iran, Finland, Belgium, Canada, Texas, England, Germany, Kenya, Norway. I saw all of my friends and all of their parents. I saw records on the carpet and kettle elements in need of minor repair.  I saw days spent in the library playing chasings and annoying people who foolishly wanted to read. I saw fish and chips and drinking milk from the carton. I saw flattened cardboard boxes and steep grass hills behind the car dealership on Saturday afternoons.
I saw paradise.
But something started in my head.  A place of indistinction where words and pictures swarm but never resolve. A place below the waterline of day to day life. Insect thoughts. And the swarm grew even though I was not outwardly panicked. Funneling out of some dark recess in sharp slivers that prevented me from forming even the simplest of  sentences. Until finally a handful of words rose up.
"What would he do to her? More?"
I saw so many beautiful things in those long moments. So many things rightfully mine for the taking. And I saw him.  And words such as Magistrate and Desk Sergeant and images of the local pub where they all drank.
And I looked at each of the faces in the Principal's tiny office and I shook my head almost imperceptibly.
No longer being able to stop the wrack that was breaking over me.
Mother

I keep thinking of that photo of Grant.

I get fixated on things that burst with importance one moment only to be of no consequence an hour, a day, a week or lifetime later...
I've spent days - weeks and months, in fact -  idly thinking of a picture of Ulysses Grant.  One of his last. Crowned by a slightly worn top hat, with a scarf wrapped 'round his throat hiding the scars of the unsuccessful operations for the disease that would soon enough kill him.
What a life. An indifferent soldier at Westpoint up on the Hudson. A poor entrepreneur, reduced to selling tinder on the streets of St Louis by his early thirties.  By all accounts a strange and shambolic man. A failure in the eyes of everyone except his long suffering wife Julia. An occasional dauber in oils and charcoals. Quite fine at it too. Proud, in fact, only of his occasional painting and horsemanship.
And then the war broke out and he slowly set about putting down the rebellion. Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Shiloh of course. Savagely fighting Longstreet, who many years before had been best man at his wedding. Heartbreaking success after success until the desperate, brilliant Lee brought him to a standstill outside Petersburg where hubris got the better of Grant for which his army paid a terrible cost in that protracted south/left flank slide. A strange and shocking conflict.
He did all of this often very drunk.
"Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.", Sherman was to say at the height (or rather one of the Union nadirs) of the war.
And Grant sits on that porch, looking up from the newspaper.  All of this past, I imagine, playing like a thread-worn home movie over again and again in his head.
And later, how he became a two term President after the war. Posterity according his Administration small praises but for the corruption, cronyism and whiskey-for-all approach. But some good... Some good... So he might have thought in that photo.
And after the Presidency, a world tour - feted by kings and queens the world over. A fine home in Manhattan bought for him by friends upon his return. But seemingly all for nought as yet again bad investment left him and his family destitute by his early sixties.
And there he is, reading the scandal sheets between bouts of memoir writing. His whole life played out somewhere beneath that damned knitted beanie and the top hat.
But it doesn't end there, does it?  The memoirs restored the family fortune for generations to come.
I look at the photo and I think sometimes life is a mood. An illness or disorder. Cyclothymia. And people are thrown up and down on the waves of its caprice - ever bashing their heads on the ceiling of beauty, ever being dashed upon the rock and sand of heartache and uncertainty.
Masters and mistresses of nothing.
Swan, swan, hummingbird.