Teeth

           I yank my MIT sweatshirt’s sleeves down over my fingers, pulling my thumbs out of the holes I chewed into the sides of them. I grip the tattered cuffs in my hands, and I scrunch them into fists. I’ve, to the best of my ability, sealed myself in, hood on, drawstring pulled. My sweatpants are tucked into my tube-socks, and I feel nostalgia creeping up behind me, because I’m wearing the sneakers that I've kept stored at this park since I worked here, during my high-school summers. There are still blood stains on the inside heels, I traced them with my thumbs before I put them on, and my right big toe still sticks out of that one, ever growing, hole. A long time ago, I calculated that these shoes had trekked over 170 miles on trails. I wonder what that number is now.

 I’ll turn 38 this year. For me, this is a fact that internally fosters both pride and panic. Pride because of accumulated insight and achieved goals, but panic because, not too far from now, I’ll be existing in the “falling action” portion of the plot diagram. I laugh and throw my hands in the air, because only God knows what my “climax” will be. I’m a Senior Chemist at Dow Chemical in Boston, I graduated from MIT in 1997 with honors and a degree in chemistry, and I have a son, named Liam, who is twenty years old. I had him when I was 18, just out of high school, and becoming a young, single mother was a life experience that outfitted me with apparent portions of empathy, resilience, and deeply-seeded motivation. I work in the biopharmaceutical division at Dow, promoting efficiency and progress, one prescription at a time. It’s ironic, really, because medications make me paranoid, and I adamantly refuse even ibuprofen. But, I mean, who knows? Maybe that’s not ironic at all.

In any event, every year, my work gives me a mandatory, month-long sabbatical, and I always come here, to Smugglers’ Notch. I had my choice, as a high school student, as to which Vermont State Park I wanted to work for, but none of the other parks’ names could even remotely compete in magnetism. My decision-making skills were, and still are, disconcerting.  

Twigs are snapping, leaves are crunching, and I cross my arms over my chest to keep warm. I see my breath, I try to construct a picture-memory of the morning fog, and I close my eyes as I walk, because I know this path. I recognize the smell of the wilting Red Maple leaves, I spot a Luna Moth, and I pass Sterling Pond, before, finally, I find Bingham Falls. I take a seat on the ledge, with my feet dangling over the edge, and I remember back to summers-gone-by. Those were the finest summers of my life thus-far, spent outside, alongside kind-natured people.  

I rent out the same yurt, each year, when I come here in the autumn. A yurt is a pseudo-cabin, but defined as a habitable tent. The ones here aren’t as nice as some that I’ve seen, but, even still, they’re outfitted with bathrooms, kitchens, and heating stoves. Smiling, I remember having to describe them to campers who inquired about staying here on trips. Yurts come from Central-Asia, they’re circular, their foundations are formed out of latticed, wooden planks, and they’re portable, invented by and formerly used as homes by Turkic nomads. Technically, the ones at Smugglers’ Notch aren’t portable, but that’s neither here nor there. It always takes me a few days, when I first arrive, to figure out why I like it here so much. I am, by no means, a “green” human being.

My son, Liam, is the exact opposite of me, in all possible ways. He dropped out of high-school at 16, something that struck with the force of a cartoon anvil the following year, when he went on to earn his GED at 17, an entire year ahead of his former classmates. I dragged him, begging him to consider universities, and he resolutely rebuffed all of my attempts. Every single one.

Once, I flew with him to Oregon, to look at Portland State University. My beautiful and brilliant son refused to even get out of the rental car when we pulled up. He took one look at the school, declared all of the students to be “hipsters”, and disavowed the entire west-coast. The only friend he made on the trip was an elderly woman, who happened to be sitting outside one of the restaurants that we ate in one evening. She was a weaver, dressed in rags, sitting on the sidewalk with her loom, hands always in motion, colors sprawling. Liam was captivated by that woman. He was drawn to her, even though she was so old, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because I was always so young. Watching him watch her was colossally poignant to me, compelling me to realize that elaborate schooling would not be his path, although it was mine.

Steadfastly, he rejected institutions, and he now works and lives in Uganda, employed by the Invisible Children movement. He is living a life that makes me shudder with pride, even though I find it confusing. His bravery abounds, but his independence is sharply painful, chilling even. As his mother, I know where he inherited it from, and it’s akin to looking into a mirror. Autonomy, jet- green eyes, and relentless fidgeting are our only shared qualities. I haven’t spoken with or seen Liam in over 15 months.  By instilling ambition and individuality into him, I unknowingly insured that I would never see my son again. My care for Liam is an area of my life that I refuse to share with other people.

My first name is Sylvaine. It’s French, and it means “of the forest”. It is transparently fitting here, in this park, where people call me “Sylvie”, but its blatancy morphs into an opaque and cavernous reality when applied to my life in Boston.  At home, I am a woman who has a glare that can cut, a ferocity that can cause blood loss. It's a front that always melted away around Liam, but it's ever-present in my day-to-day setting. I am a woman, somehow foreign in my own home.

A quiet soul, I talk only when necessary. I’m a firm believer in the theory that words used sparsely are words used mightily, and I am always dressed in black, typically a pencil-skirt, usually paired with threatening, pointy-toed stilettos. I have a Chinese calligraphy tattoo, one that I got when I graduated from high school, and it goes vertically down my left shoulder blade. I can just see it if I look over my shoulder, and it, harmonizing with my clothing choices, doesn’t buy me many friends in the scientific community. An accepted hurdle. Notably, I’m a scientist, but MIT and Dow were mostly just to prove to myself that I could. Purposely, I am stand-offish and brisk. My hair is a deep, dark shade of brown, and it's curly and long, reaching all the way to my lower back. I always wear it down, but usually flung over my right shoulder, exposing my tattoo. Showing it never, ever gets old.    

When Liam was young and I needed to bring him along with me in my daily activities, we were a stark and striking contrast to one another. My tattoo and dark features, teeth standing out against my sinister lipstick, distinctly countered his pale, innocent, and creamy complexion. Blonde-haired and wide-eyed, he offered a contradiction to my appearance, teaching outsiders a lesson by seeming to be dissimilar and separate from me.

I told you about my sweatshirt, how it bears chewed-out thumbholes. Admittedly, that’s a common characteristic of most of my articles of clothing. Chewing is my choice form of fidgeting. Especially when I’m concentrated or focused, dissecting or illuminating something significant to me, I chew on my sleeves. Liam does it, too. For that reason, I do not wear long-sleeves to work, and I always, when he was young, outfitted him with layers, the lowest one consistently short-sleeved. That type of restlessness can be ill-interpreted. As I sit here by myself, in the morning chill, in this park that means so much to me, I realize that I’ve outgrown the sleeves that once kept me warm. I live in two worlds, and, accordingly, nobody truly understands me in either one.

For, if they don’t understand my silence, they will never, ever understand my words.