“A Reflection on Life After”

Lissa Supler

I hold onto the receiver as she hurries through her words.

                “Bye now,” she says and there’s a click.

                I stare at the phone and think, this is Life. Everyone is in a hurry; people walking away. No one waits.

                Mommy, wait! I cry to someone in the crowd, a blurred vision of dark hair and dark eyes.  But the vision blurs away and I am left holding out my trembling hand to the Past. But that too is gone, sliding easily away, without a sound.

                Someone should write a song about this: “No One Cares For You After Graduation.” I’m a full-time college kid with a full-time job, directing one musical while starring in a “straight” comedy every weekend. But who are these audience members? And then I ask myself, who are you?

                So what if I’m a full-time college-kid? I don’t even go to a “real”  college, as I am mockingly reminded of everyday. I’m stuck in a town where everyone knows me and forces my life onto display, for their own sport and amusement. My friends are all away at “real” college. Sometimes, I wish I was with them.

                I look out my window and try to see them, so far away, and sometimes wish I was with them. School colors—black, yellow, and blue; a graciously wide campus—everything so white I feel like I’m walking on a china plate at twelve noon.  The sea air, the pearly-gray sky, the carefully-tended bright flowers and gardens. The passing students, all around my age, with heavy backpacks and arms full of books, discussing Kandinsky, Dostoevesky, the Beatniks, the newest movie. Eating meals in a crowded lunch hall—but laughter—laughter everywhere. Sleeping in a dorm with a roommate doing business with her special friend. Alarm clocks, term papers, five-hundred students in a class.

                Sometimes, I wish for all of that.  It was all in my grasp for a few short months.  The campus was mine; its gleaming sidewalks and rustling flags were the walkway and soundtrack of my new life.

                I stood on that campus and felt it for one beautiful day. But I was an interloper. I didn’t truly belong. I was the outcast, the oddball, the temperamental actress and the insecure artiste. 

                And Time passes, supposedly healing the insult of always being ‘the weird one.’  I wake up one morning to realize that I almost died, but now, there’s no evidence except a cut on one hand and the memory forever burned into my soul. So don’t worry, Mom and Dad – you needn’t remind me of my mistakes or of my phantom-death. I will always remember. I will sit alone in my mind, the candles and their shadows making love on the blank walls, and I will remember what it feels like to wait for Death. I remember Now.

                But then I see a small club off the corner of Beverly Hills and Wilshire; I realize that there’s music. There’s one song in particular that I hear; soft at first, but growing stronger-. My voice struggles through the notes, trying to sing my own song against the orchestra, and somehow, everything is bound together with effortless color and flow. My child’s song translates into a woman’s song, and my ridiculously low alto can still sing with power, no matter what the professors near the music offices say – no matter what the critics say.

                And as this song continues, I see emerald, jade, lime, green – Temecula is in bloom. This-this town-this town is my home. Temecula, with its sweeping beauty and growing grapes, with its flow of blook-like wine and avarice, with its snobbery and small-mindedness-Temecula is my home. I laugh with my customers; I take part in another play. I work tirelessly on projects that are essentially time capsules of my life. I crash and break and am reborn from my ashes. I cry, sweat, bleed, and earn my life. I pass by a quiet churchyard with weeping, vigilant trees where a dear friend sleeps. I put on another coat of mascara and add another pin to my purse. I drink Thomas Kelper’s Orange Soda to toast my quite literary successes. I fight, I feud, I love, I hate. I fall apart and somehow put myself back together again.

                I look around at the walls of my chosen room: my yellow walls, my yellow curtains, my yellow blankets. Posters on my yellow walls advertise my shows. The pictures are all of a happy, smiling Lissa and her friends. And I see a well-worn Bible at the nightstand next to a small orange teddy bear and a mug full of pens.

                When confronted with this yellow vision, I realize that yes, I am grateful for this past year and what it has taught me. The Lord had a different path for me.

                So, goodbye, white-edged dream of college life and grown-up freedom. A small school and a small town will do for now. In that college-dream, there are no roosters ceaselessly crowing near Lot Twelve even when the sun is well up; there is no clocktower ringing “Mister Sandman” at exactly four o’clock; there is no theatre with a plush-carpeted crawl space that’s excellent for dreaming.

                I have found myself and have really earned my own life.