Someday We'll Look Back and Laugh About This
My big brother pulls into the shady parking lot of the Tulsa Tower and we can already hear hedges buzzing, heavy with drunken bees. The air is thick with gnats. We stop to inhale and assess the height of the building. Tilting our heads back, we can see where we’re headed: far above the green boughs of trees that might cushion a fall from a balcony thirty stories high.
We remember Riverside Drive four decades ago, before the Tulsa Tower was built, before our family cracked and broke. The tallest building in those days was wrapped in glass, a diamond finger on our left, before the road curved away from the river toward downtown. Our mother moved to that original monolith when she finally gave up the green lawns of the ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ suburban scene.
I visited her downtown a few times after my big brother left for college, but it was never pleasant. The stale smell in the hallway made me choke. The starkness of her tiny apartment was paralyzing. It was too high off the ground. She was moody. Stiff with pain one moment, shaking with despair the next. I didn’t know what to say.
“Well Mom, someday we'll look back and laugh about this, I bet.
I sat frozen on her rented couch while she melted. She sobbed into her secondhand dining table for forty-five minutes. I waited and listened. Then I tiptoed out the front door and drove back down Riverside Drive to the South side to get dinner ready for my dad and little brother.
Tonight it's thirty years after the whole family flapped out of the nest in five different directions, landing on separate continents and establishing independent identities.
On a rare flukey visit to our home town, my big brother wants me to meet his buddy Scott. On the way to the top of Scott's Tower, I wonder if I'll be able to breathe in the hallway. I hope the elevator doesn’t stop between floors. I pray we don’t have a tornado this evening. I don't want to have to evacuate.
On the way to the top of Scott's Tower, I wonder if I'll be able to breathe in the hallway.
With a muted bong at THIRTY, the stainless steel doors slide away and we’re in a tunnel glowing with recessed light. This kind of light is enough to hold back panic, or let a drunk decipher an address. It cannot, however, replace pure natural light. It’s not like bright sunlight on whitecaps.
My brother rings Scott's buzzer.
The door opens, and an evening of superlatives begins with the Most Congenial Host. Scott is extra tall with green plaid Bermuda shorts, a small alligator over the pocket of his polo shirt. We follow him along the curved, mirrored hallway. We glide on cool marble, along an oversized black and white checker board. He leads us into a vast living room with a panoramic view of the city skyline, the Arkansas River, and the Oklahoma prairie beyond. One of my eyebrows rises and my brother grins.
The view is familiar, but I have never seen it from this angle. Scott has massive leather couches clustered around his sunken entertainment center, which keeps the TV screen below the sweeping wall of windows.
He hands us high-powered binoculars, then ushers us out to the balcony and pulls up padded bar stools to the telescope. Aiming it at the airport, we can read the names on the side of the planes. Turned toward the historic Cimarron Ballroom, we can see the employees arriving for the evening. Tiny people going through tiny doors down at ground level. He brings out his camera and captures us looking at his world.
Scott lays out salmon pate and fancy nuts, then cranks up the grill and puts his full attention on me. I decline nick-named mixed drinks. We are up thirty stories, after all.
He pours 7-Up and announces the beginning of a multimedia show. What is my preference? His music library, with tapings of rare concerts and behind-the-scenes documentaries, is exhaustive. All I have to do is say the word: Any genre, any era, any style, what?
"Do you have Keith Jarrett, the Koln Concert?"
His face drops. He shakes his head.
"It doesn't matter. It was a long shot. Surprise me.”
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
"How about the Moody Blues?" he asks, reaching for a CD among hundreds. "I've got them Live at Red Rock Canyon, with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Incredible acoustics. Fantastic. Really."
He puts on the Moody Blues, and there they are. There's the breathtaking canyon, funneling the music to me, pinning me to the leather upholstery. So now I’m in front of a giant screen with Surround Sound drowning me in music I had hoped never to hear again…
Thirty Stories High/ Part Two of Three: Santa Cruz…up next Wednesday.
Sherry ! Wow! I’m so sorry about the heartache in your family. It must have taken so much courage for your Mom to make the decisions she made. Hopefully in someway , healing and with deeper understanding to revisit after so many years.
I Love the Multi Media. Encompasses fully our times. Like the layers of Earth in a archeological dig. The embellished photo - VERY INTERESTING. Almost as if two stories are being told simultaneously.