pause
Yesterday Gabe told me about how he had smoked a cigarette for the first time in a long while. I thought about how the smell would be on his hands and in the fibers of his clothes. I’m not a regular smoker but I wanted a cigarette badly at that moment. I used to hate cigarettes very much, the way everyone does as a child. I remember seeing commercials where Smokey the Bear would squash a cigarette with his bar paw on the ground of the forest and look at me disapprovingly.
“Only you can prevent forest fires, Anaïs,” his large opaque eyes seemed to say.
A presentation to my very young kindergarten class about the dangers of smoking (ie. death) also cemented this fear in me. A few days later at a family party, I saw my dad light a cigarette in the backyard. I ran as fast as my little legs could move and smacked it out of his hand. He looked stung until he saw the tears in my eyes and bent down to my level. I coiled my arms around his neck and sobbed.
“I don’t want you to die, Daddy,” I whispered in his ear. I felt him sigh against me.
He didn’t smoke another cigarette my entire childhood, from that day forward. If he smoked when away from me, I don’t know but I don’t think so. He never smelled like a cigarette again and I never saw a pack of cigarettes anywhere around him. Plus, he’s just that kind of man, to stop smoking for that reason.
I went to dinner at my dad’s house last night. My stepmom cooked amazing paella and a spinach torte, and we all shared a big bottle of merlot as we ate and talked. After dinner, my dad and I went for a walk. We like to walk together now that we’re older, now that we’ve rebuilt the semblance of a relationship. A few blocks from his house, he pulled out a pack of Marlboros and lit one, the glow of the lighter the only light besides the dainty streetlamps. I thought about this for a minute and he looked at me.
“I started again a few months ago,” he said. “I’m an old man, I’m retired. I want to do the things I like.”
“Okay. May I have one?” I looked at him and he looked quiet for a minute.
“No.” He took a long drag of his cigarette. “You’re a baby and you have your whole life ahead of you. Young people don’t need to smoke, they haven’t even gotten tired of living yet. Plus, I’d rather see you old than die.”
“But I feel the same about you.”
“I’m already old. I took care of myself this long for you and now I’m here. I can do some bad things now and then. You’re 22. Take care of yourself, if not for yourself then for someone else.”
We kept walking for a while. We talked about my desire to buy a plane ticket to somewhere I’ve never been and just go for a few days or weeks. He smiled because he was the same way at my age. He asked about Gabe and I asked whether his old man life was driving my stepmom crazy yet. We got back to the house and hugged. He stood and watched me drive away, one hand in a wave as he always did. I drove with my windows down.
I came home and undressed. I turned my laptop on and sat at my desk waiting for it to be ready to write. My brain was not yet ready to write. I found my pack of Nat Shermans in my desk drawer and lit one, a long yellow cigarette, while lifting the window open. I smoked quietly. I always smoke one cigarette and then I stop, for weeks at a time. Last night was the night for one. I thought about what my dad said, about young people not being tired of living yet. It’s true. I am ripe with the joy of living every day.
But maybe times are different now. We’re tired by different things, by the overwhelming need to be connected at all times, to everyone. We’re overstimulated and lacking sleep. Even in sleep, we can’t shut our minds off, always going, always working. The living doesn’t stop, even for you to catch your breath. I smoke a cigarette like I imagine the rebel Buddhist might. I light it, sit indian style on the floor, and inhale the toxins of that one cigarette, hoping that whatever death is in that tiny stick kills some of my overactive mind, my worry for a few minutes. I meditate on the stillness of that moment and I exhale. I take a reprieve from living because I want to feel that exuberance. The pause is necessary to living. I need to stop and remember why I’m living, put myself as close as I can to the quiet danger of that cigarette to know that life isn’t going to ever stop but that I, too, can keep up, run ahead of the pack even.
I put out that cigarette in an empty glass and continue the singular, terrifying, exhilarating, exhausting process that is living.
