mid-winter blues

My skateboards sit stacked on top of one another in the basement, thirsting for my attention, as I remain mired in the mid-winter doldrums. I finally found time to clean up from the last thaw, which now seems like a distant memory. A winter’s worth of ice and snow had melted within days and found its way between foundation cracks and bum rushed my over-worked sump pump to flood my basement floor.
Fresh snow now tumbles out of the sky, obscuring the concrete and the horizon.
Springtime holds bittersweet promise; I’ll be heading back on the board, for whatever it is worth. Another year older, more unfulfilled dreams to add to my arsenal, pocket full of regrets as I waste my days dreaming of tomorrow.
What potential lies with those seven-ply’s of maple? How much more can this body, these joints take? Just on the cusp of forty, but sometimes I feel so old. The board lies to me as I have done to so many others, including myself. She tells me I can harness the concrete, tells me that the bonds of gravity can be broken and tells me that I can recapture my lost youth.
What have I really lost, though? Being a has-been is not nearly as tragic as being a never-been. I have only given the absolute minimum required of her, just as I have with all my other loves. I feel like a fraud. A wannabe and a poser. Tallying another interesting story for no one to hear.
Lies to tell myself as the lights begin to dim. To make myself feel like I had lived a genuine life, even for just a moment. Just so I can pretend that I lived this life to the fullest and experienced the heights and depths of this finite existence.
I expect quick and easy gratification, easy categorization, and instant Nirvana without any true effort. But the truth is that the board does not lie and concrete hurts. One miscue, one lazy arrogant moment and bones are broken. Unmindful or preoccupied with useless nothings, I go tumbling down the bank. Slamming into the transition, wondering where it all went wrong.
I will make no more promises for now. I will ride that board when the spring finally comes along, some sweet long April morning in between the rains. I have nothing to prove to anyone else, just need to prove something to myself. Something remains unfinished between the board and me, some long forgotten oath after a sweat-drenched session or a bone-jarring slam.
Layers of skin left at the park, scars cut into my arms and knees, but I remain indebted. Some buried part of me screams for release and completion, anger and anguish beneath this sullen shell of a man. So much remains undone and unaccomplished.
Let me fly and float, cruise along the smoothness and teach me to cherish each pump and each breath. Open me to the sacred eternal now, open my smiling eyes and toothy grin, and unclench my face to the warm sun. One go round in this bag of skin, and still I wait, still I stand on the sidelines, watching and waiting, for who knows what.
There is only one moment, this moment, right now and here, and all our yesterdays and tomorrows collapsing into this razor’s edge of eternity. The living is bittersweet no matter what our individual stories are, so what choice is there but to be witnesses to this moment.
Brush the cobwebs from my trucks, spin the wheels and check the hardware,
endless summer in a single day. Brush the cobwebs from my mind; drag these old bones out onto the concrete park and let go, let go, free at last. Its time to skate boys, time to put all else aside, leaving the thinking to someone else, or another time or place.