For the Christmas Spirit

It’s been hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit this year.

 

Normally at this time a year I would have this ball of worry about money, because Christmas is an expensive time of year. I still do, but it’s a shit load bigger now.

 

Anyway, I have also been hit with the real life shit.

My mum’s cancer wasn’t as little as we all thought, it was actually, type three, in stage one—I learnt the details off my sister as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 started up—and she’s going to have to go and get chemo next year.

It’s not great news, but it seemed they got most of it, but because of the type of cancer it is, there a 50% possibility of it returning in 5 years.

 

Sucks at that is. It’s something that well have to deal with individually as we support mum threw the Chemo.

 

Anyway, it’s Christmas and I thought I would share a bit from My Kevin, it’s into its final cleaning of editing, and I’m hoping to get it out for the beginning of 2014.

 

My Kevin

 

Life, is what we live. It’s what we breathe. It’s who we love.

 

This is the story of Kevin and me; I am Jimmy. Our story is not long, and it’s not complex. It’s not something to cry over, and it’s certainly not something to moan about. Our story is simple, and I feel like I have been blessed, being able to grow, live, laugh, and love with the one person I was meant to be with. And it has been that way for as long as I can remember.

           

            *****

It’s funny how when people think about their lives, they remember the pain as well as the pleasure. Memories that stick, are always the same. Like that moment when you first set eyes on your soul mate.

     Now, the thing with memories, especially something that happened so long ago, a lot ends up being what others say happened, and those words, their perception turns into a real life memory for you, so you can’t actually remember it in the mind of a child, but that of the adults watching it all happen.

     Jimmy remembered a truck. It was big and red, but he wasn’t actually sure if it was the truck itself that was red, the trailer it carried, or what the movers were wearing. All he truly remembered was a big red truck, and Kevin.

     He has a stronger memory of his father as he ranted and raved, at the hippies living next door. Like everything about them was offensive to him. From the trackies, and overalls, as she took the buckets out of her shower to water her garden. And Kevin’s dad as he mowed his own lawn in his shorts and thongs with thick red socks.

     Jimmy had seen them as strange and fun. And he’d always liked being over there. He’d remembered it as being exciting and lively and nothing like his own home.

     It had always been full of laugher and touching. They touched so much. Hugged and kissed, and told each other they mattered and they were special even if they’d just pulled the cheese outta the fridge.

     That’d been another world to what Jimmy had ever known.

     He’d been told that going over to Kevin’s house hadn’t happened straight away like he’d thought happened. Kevin’s mum had spoken, with that chuckle in her voice, at how Jimmy and Kevin would run up and down the side of the house. Playing with each other, as they raced, the length of the property. Screaming at each other as they went.

     She once told us that it was the moment that Jimmy and Kevin stood on the driveway swapping food that they’d finally made the step of going to each other houses.

     It wasn’t that they’d never been off their own property before, and yet, it had never really occurred to them that there was more they could do than what they had been doing.

     Maybe the idea that Jimmy wasn’t allowed to get dirty, was what kept him away from that thought. He’s mother had always been particular that way. Always yelling at him if he came home with a spot of dirt on his clothes. Like it offended her that he was a kid and didn’t care about what he was wearing as much as how fun that dirty hill would be to roll down.

     But then, compared to Kevin’s house, Jimmy’s was hospital room sterile. It had been one of those things that Jimmy had hated his whole life, and yet, the smell of cleaning products lingering on his driveway as he headed up to the house, was something that unconsciously called him home.

     There first kiss, or at least the one that Jimmy seemed to cling hold of, wasn’t something he could guarantee happened the way he saw it. Or if the one he remembered was truly that moment he put it in.

     He’d been hurt. He wasn’t sure if it was physically or mentally, but he’d been in kindy. He’d been sitting on the silver seats and he’d been crying.

     Those where the points his mind wouldn’t let go of. He’d been hurt. It hadn’t been because people were cooing and ahhing at them, wanting to see the cuteness of two small boys kiss. A calendar marker or something. He’d simply been hurting.

     Kevin had squatted down in front of him, cupped his chin and made Jimmy look at him. He asked what had happened, and Jimmy would have answered. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but each time the memory came round he was sure words had actually happened between them. Filling in a moment he’d started to forget.

     He remembered the serious look on Kevin’s face as they had spoken. The gentle hands as he fixed what was broken, and then a simple brush of lips against lips.

     Kevin never remembers this as a kiss exactly. It’s not as if he’s forgotten that it happened. Or that he just flat out refused its existence. More that it wasn’t anything different, or unusual for him, so it floated away as part of the past.