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I remember the blue targeting marks, on my father's neck. He had gone to the doctor after a sore throat became a persistent pain; I remember us pulling over to a roadside diner, and his walking to the payphone. I remember him standing there after hanging up for just a moment, as though he were processing information; then, he looked over at ten-or-so me. He was probably deciding exactly how to impart the information to me; he was a teacher, and was- is- excellent at communicating difficult concepts. I remember us continuing on the drive to my grandmother's house in Plattsburg, quiet now, struggling to come to terms with what he had told me. I don't remember the conversation itself- I have a long habit of burying certain memories- but the gist must surely have been: They found something on my vocal cord, and they want to do a biopsy. How grimly appropriate to get that call on the way to my grandmother's house; her husband, my grandfather, had wasted away before our eyes two years before. That time, I think, they used chemotherapy- I remember his hair falling out towards the end- but for my father, they used radiation.
I remember the trips to Syracuse. He would usually stay the night, as the treatments were somewhat draining; when he came home, I could see that his vitality had been drained; for a day or two, he would be quiet and subdued, then gradually he would finally come fully back to life. Until the next time.
I remember a red dot, dancing on my fingertip- a laser, used somehow to help them determine exactly how to place the targeting marks that would help them aim the gun-like apparatus that they would use to blast radiation into my father's neck. For some reason, Dad had asked me to come with him this time- one of the last treatments, I think- and the doctor was trying to demystify the process for me. I was a fearful child, and I'm sure that it was difficult for them to persuade me to come into the office (this memory, too, is gone). A vague thought-image of looking at the harmless laser dancing on my fingertip and thinking, that's radiation, too.
It's almost difficult to sort out the fear of radiation- of the times over the next few years when I would wake my father in the middle of the night, hysterically convinced that I had cancer- from the more generalized aura of fear that seemed to suffuse so much of my childhood. Fear of the dark, of heights, of shark attacks. Of nuclear war- the grim crocodile laugh of Dr. Strangelove come to life. Of watching Carter, and then Reagan, and thinking, That man could bring it to life. Streaks against the sky, and then the lightning flash, consuming us all. Of growing to the beginnings of maturity under the umbrella of knowing that we never never more than twenty-two minutes away from The End- six, if they used submarines. The Day After, Special Bulletin, Testament- books and movies making clear to us, with a grim and horrible clarity, just how tenuous all of this truly was. The anger and resentment that came out of growing up with this knowledge, and being too young at the time to so much as vote, to help keep Armageddon at bay.
The world continued on its way, of course, in the face of these grim events and imaginings (mercifully, my father's throat tumor turned out to be benign; he still, twenty-five years later, occasionally sings with the church choir in Postdam), and eventually, I found a solace of sorts, in post-Armageddon fiction. Ark II and Thundarr the Barbarian; The Road Warrior, A Boy and His Dog, and Planet of the Apes (and Godzilla, in its way); Lord of the Flies, Damnation Alley and Jitterbug. Gamma World, if you remember that particular role-playing game; I'd design campaign after campaign (most of which were never played), detailing life after the end, a cartoon world of mad AIs and intelligent, mutated animals. Later, the urge to reshape the fears turned itself to screenplays; one of the many post-holocaust scripts I wrote- now lost, as so much of my childhood- helped get me into film school. Even now, as the world's tilting on its axis once again causes me to revisit those times in memory, I try and fail to put into words how it feels to me (even now, writing in fanfiction form about a war), to associate these two subjects so closely- destruction and creation. Imagination's flight, in the face of all that is; voting, and doing what else I can, to keep the darkness at bay; the occasional hard-fought happy ending (or not), and surviving that which I would think unsurvivable. I remember a line, from a long-forgotten poem I wrote, back in the now-vanished 80s:
Even the warmth of the sun upon my face comes from what is essentially a hydrogen bomb.
I remember the trips to Syracuse. He would usually stay the night, as the treatments were somewhat draining; when he came home, I could see that his vitality had been drained; for a day or two, he would be quiet and subdued, then gradually he would finally come fully back to life. Until the next time.
I remember a red dot, dancing on my fingertip- a laser, used somehow to help them determine exactly how to place the targeting marks that would help them aim the gun-like apparatus that they would use to blast radiation into my father's neck. For some reason, Dad had asked me to come with him this time- one of the last treatments, I think- and the doctor was trying to demystify the process for me. I was a fearful child, and I'm sure that it was difficult for them to persuade me to come into the office (this memory, too, is gone). A vague thought-image of looking at the harmless laser dancing on my fingertip and thinking, that's radiation, too.
It's almost difficult to sort out the fear of radiation- of the times over the next few years when I would wake my father in the middle of the night, hysterically convinced that I had cancer- from the more generalized aura of fear that seemed to suffuse so much of my childhood. Fear of the dark, of heights, of shark attacks. Of nuclear war- the grim crocodile laugh of Dr. Strangelove come to life. Of watching Carter, and then Reagan, and thinking, That man could bring it to life. Streaks against the sky, and then the lightning flash, consuming us all. Of growing to the beginnings of maturity under the umbrella of knowing that we never never more than twenty-two minutes away from The End- six, if they used submarines. The Day After, Special Bulletin, Testament- books and movies making clear to us, with a grim and horrible clarity, just how tenuous all of this truly was. The anger and resentment that came out of growing up with this knowledge, and being too young at the time to so much as vote, to help keep Armageddon at bay.
The world continued on its way, of course, in the face of these grim events and imaginings (mercifully, my father's throat tumor turned out to be benign; he still, twenty-five years later, occasionally sings with the church choir in Postdam), and eventually, I found a solace of sorts, in post-Armageddon fiction. Ark II and Thundarr the Barbarian; The Road Warrior, A Boy and His Dog, and Planet of the Apes (and Godzilla, in its way); Lord of the Flies, Damnation Alley and Jitterbug. Gamma World, if you remember that particular role-playing game; I'd design campaign after campaign (most of which were never played), detailing life after the end, a cartoon world of mad AIs and intelligent, mutated animals. Later, the urge to reshape the fears turned itself to screenplays; one of the many post-holocaust scripts I wrote- now lost, as so much of my childhood- helped get me into film school. Even now, as the world's tilting on its axis once again causes me to revisit those times in memory, I try and fail to put into words how it feels to me (even now, writing in fanfiction form about a war), to associate these two subjects so closely- destruction and creation. Imagination's flight, in the face of all that is; voting, and doing what else I can, to keep the darkness at bay; the occasional hard-fought happy ending (or not), and surviving that which I would think unsurvivable. I remember a line, from a long-forgotten poem I wrote, back in the now-vanished 80s:
Even the warmth of the sun upon my face comes from what is essentially a hydrogen bomb.
