Saturday in the Park

The music is too loud. I can hear it inside my house, through the doors. It vibrates through the windowpanes, and the plates rattle in their cupboards. It's not usually this loud. Or maybe it is. I'm not usually here for the concert. I guess I'll have to say that it wasn't this loud when I was a kid.

Then again, a lot of things were different when I was a kid. I believed in magic. The Tooth Fairy. Santa Clause. Little elves that sneak in at night to make shoes for the poor shoemaker. Ha. The Tooth Fairy was my mother. Santa Clause was my father. And those little elves might exist, but no one ever made my shoes when I was poor.

But we all have our poor moments. We can't expect too much help. We get to fulfill the American Dream. Capitalism! Free Enterprise! Well, there's more than one kind of livelihood: that which keeps us alive, and that which allows us to live. I may have grown cynical, but I don't see anyone fighting for our right to live fully and happily. We can't have everything, I guess.

But I expect to find what I need to live. More than food and water and shelter. Once, I thought I had everything I needed, but that was a long time ago. Most twelve-year-olds think their parents owe them something. All of my school friends did, at least. They wanted the right shoes or the right basketball team or the latest game machine. They were never happy. I never really understood why they aspired to such material achievements. Maybe I always had the right shoes and the right basketball team. I don't remember, anymore. I didn't mind not having so many games. I had a pen pal. What more could a person want?

I was raised to believe that money and luxuries are a very small part of life. My younger brother and I were hardly spoiled, though we didn't know the meaning of "hardship". I guess you could say that we were encouraged to accept odd opportunities when they came around. We understood worth as something separate from a price tag.

My teacher, Mrs. Berkman, had a sister in England who also taught school. I was nine years old--third grade--when Mrs. Berkman asked me to consider becoming a pen pal with one of her sister's students. It's only now that I wonder why she didn't ask anyone else in the class. I wasn't the best writer in the class. I was hardly the best student. Emily, the girl who sat next to me, would have made a better correspondent. But Mrs. Berkman chose me. Hunh. I've never understood that decision, though, for a few years, I fairly glowed with appreciation.

Hermione was such an odd pen pal. At first, I couldn't make heads or tails of her letters--they all seemed so perfect and unreal. She talked about her parents and their dentistry. She talked about her classmates. She talked about the weather and the scenery and even the pigeons in the parks. But she never talked about herself. Not at first. I wrote my letters just as I thought them. I admit, they weren't as well composed as hers, but I enjoyed writing them. Eventually, she began talking about herself. I was intrigued by her. She was unlike any of my friends.

Hermione was in a class by herself, as far as I was concerned. She read books about history and art and science. She encouraged me to study more for my tests and quizzes, and she knew things. I admit that I was in awe as much as anything else. My parents decided that it would be ... what did they say? ... beneficial for me if she were to visit. My hand dragged across the page as if it were its own, separate entity. I didn't want to meet her. She was Hermione. I was Eric. The two might be able to write letters back and forth, but I knew that the summer would be boring. It would consist of me dragging her around and giving her the history of the town. I grumbled as I wrote the letter. I grumbled as I looked at its sloppy words. I grumbled as I sealed the envelope, stamped it, and mailed it. I grumbled at my parents for an entire week.

I had no idea how eager she was to visit until she sent her reply to my letter. It was the shortest letter I ever received from her. I think that it was also the most spontaneous letter in her life. Her penmanship was sloppy, the ink was smeared, and the paper was literally stuffed into the envelope. For the first time since we began corresponding, I thought that she just might be an interesting person with even a small amount of spark and vivacity. I still have that letter ... somewhere. In a box, I think. With all of her other letters.

That summer was something else. We went to a concert in the park--I had so much fun, but I can't remember who was playing. We bought funnel cakes and cold lemonade (sour, I recall). And Hermione spent every night watching the fireflies. I remember that very well. Sometimes, she'd make me sit with her. I pretended to whine and feign exhaustion, but I enjoyed sitting there, watching Spud bark at the insects. I hadn't done that since I was five years old.

She stayed for more than a month, but, at the end of July, she had to go back to England. I wished that she would stay with my family for a few more weeks--a fortnight, she called it--but her parents called and reminded her that she had to return and prepare for school. She promised to write, and I promised to visit the next summer.

She sent me a letter as soon as she got home, but it was the last letter she ever mailed. I sent a few letters, asking where she was, if she was alright, but she never answered. Finally, her parents wrote to me. They said that Hermione changed schools and that they'd sent my letters on to her. But they also told me not to expect any letters in return--Hermione was embarrassed about her new location, I thought. She was a smart girl; I couldn't see how any school she attended could be a bad place, so I sent a few more letters, hoping for a response.

One night, a few years after she'd stopped writing, the oddest thing happened. I was fifteen, and I spent as little time with my parents as possible. I was in my bedroom, which faced the backyard, and a big, white owl landed and tapped on one of the windows. I opened the window and the screen to let it in, but it just dropped a pile of letters on my windowsill before soaring away with a solitary letter tied to its leg. What I found was startling, to say the least.

In front of me lay a single, large envelope made of parchment and addressed to me by Hermione (her writing is very distinct). Rather, my name was on the envelope--there was no address. The parchment, alone, surprised me. Hermione never seemed the type to accept the use animal skins as paper. As I opened the envelope, however, I stopped wondering about the parchment and paused to gape at the contents. I found ten or twelve letters composed on rolls of parchment, each at least three feet long. I couldn't even begin to imagine how they fit in the envelope in the first place. They were all dated, so I began with the earliest and spent the rest of the night reading the miniscule writing. Apparently, she was using a quill and ink, for there were blots and smudges in a few of the margins.

I have no doubt that she never intended to mail those letters. None of them were finished. Not one. I sat and smiled for the first time since her odd silence had begun--she didn't want to ignore me! She just didn't know how to tell me about the truth.

I didn't care that she was a witch. I didn't care that she was a witch. I cared that she was Hermione. I read and reread those letters until the parchment began to crumble. And then I laminated them. I admit, it sounds ridiculous, but I couldn't think of any other way to preserve them. I could Windex a laminated letter to remove the fingerprints. I wrote her parents another letter. Of course, I never said that I knew Hermione's secret; she never actually told me, so I couldn't tell anything. But her parents very politely told me that Hermione needed to be involved in her own school--she didn't have time to write letters, anymore.

I knew it was a lie. But I treated it as the truth because they wanted me to treat it as such. And, so I stopped writing to them, to Hermione. Instead, I listened.

I waited so long to hear something--anything! And I, apparently, couldn't strain my senses to that extent. When summer came, I had quite given up. I don't know what I was listening for. At the time, I thought that more mysterious letters might arrive with that snowy white owl. But they never did. I don't suppose there were any more to be sent. Then, I thought she might give me a call on the telephone. I can't believe what a ridiculous idea that was--she had never called me from her home; why would she call me from her school? I don't even know if wizards and witches use telephones. Seeing as how they have so many other, wonderful powers, surely they can bypass such a mundane piece of technology.

I didn't know what to listen for, but I waited, nonetheless. The year the letters arrived was a long year. I received the letters in September. I waited expectantly until Thanksgiving. I heard nothing. I casually looked for something at Christmas. I heard nothing. I expected nothing at Valentine's Day. I wasn't disappointed.

Late in May, I watched the fireflies return to the yards as dusk set in. That first night, I dreamed about Hermione. I had dreamed about her for many summers -every summer since she had visited. It was an odd dream. Fragmented, distorted. It swarmed with fireflies, but Hermione wasn't nervous. She sat on the dream-lawn and let them hover around her and float through her hair. She spoke, but the very words were made of fireflies, and her voice was illuminated. She spoke of her life, her friends, her loneliness. She said that she missed me.

The dream took a long time. The fireflies kept covering her face so that she had to pause and gently brush them away. And, every few minutes, I would find myself in an old castle. I was in a bedroom shared by five different beds. I can only assume that this heavy, red room was my imagination's idea of Hermione's dormitory.

This first dream after the letters is the only one I recall with any clarity. The rest are a jumble of thoughts in my memory. I dreamt of Hermione every night, the visions and voices fading as the summer aged and the fireflies died. My reminders of her were leaving until the next year.

Each summer for many years I dreamt of her. The form was always the same: Hermione would talk to me about her life, and I would, occasionally, see that red-draped room.

But I stopped listening. How could I listen when there was nothing to hear? The dreams were all the same, though the words were always different, and they only came with the fireflies. Only a lunatic would continue to listen to the voices in his head.

So I concentrated on important goals. I finished high school. I finished college. I moved away, into a new city. I opened a business from my home. I succeeded. I succeeded in my business, and I succeeded in banishing the voices from my dreams; if I ever again dreamt of Hermione, then I never remembered such an event. When I was free of these ghosts, I returned home. I went back to my hometown.

And this is how I want my life to be. I am a professional. I have numerous friends and acquaintances around the world. I do not have the time for childish letters and visions.

I wish these new bands would learn the art of quiet intensity. I don't think it shows much respect for a community when a group plays their music at this volume, at this time of night, for an outdoor concert. Some of us would like to sleep without unwelcome interruptions.