Morgan: the beginning

This was the place I used to sit when I wanted to be alone. It was familiar, unassuming and tranquil. Far from the hustle of pedestrians walking by or rumbling cars stuck in traffic. The sounds were natural back then; a streaming lake, a chirping bird, a squirrel climbing a tree. Ironically, it was also the place my father was brutally murdered ten years ago.

I’ve long since moved from this town but sometimes I’ve reluctantly come back and this is the last place I always visit. I sit by this abandoned plot of serenity and my mind wanders to when things were innocent and pure.

I’m no longer the person i was when i lived in this town but nostalgia still calls me like the old dusty jazz records my father kept in my childhood home basement from his college days. The deep throated crows circled above and sung "my funny valentine" to the most heartbrokened visitor harmonized with the saxophone of the wind and the bass of the trees.

I’m here now sitting at the base of this leaky lake, it’s the fall of 2014. My oldest sister is getting married to her high school sweetheart. It’s romantic, clichéd and completely boring. It’s nothing I would do but everything she is doing. I’m the maid of honor.

Oddly, even after we moved from Lake town, Rachel my sister, was infatuated with it. She couldn’t shake it’s small town Midwestern suburbanism nor could she shake Timmy Waters her jock football player boyfriend that will now be her husband. Standing 6’3 and weighing 215 solid pounds, Timmy’s broad brown shoulders morph Rachel’s petite lithe frame. I guess although I always loath the smallish way everyone in lake town acts I knew it wasn’t the town that I needed to escape. The place is charming. The people do try to be good neighbors and citizens. Timmy Waters is kind of attractive.

However, compared to Boston where I currently live Lake town is lacking cultural significance. It’s a nothing town, surrounded by even bigger nothing towns with nothing people marrying other nothing people. Sorry Rachel but the path shes taking her life will in no way touch or transform the world as we know it.

I however, am on a different trajectory. It’s far from Lake town and everything I’ve convinced myself it represents. My father’s death, the catalyst of my trajectory, radiates through lake town and it’s inhabitants like the after effects of a nuclear meltdown. I sit here convinced that my presence emits a glow like an alien transported back to her earthly "assignment".

I’m awaiting the text message of my best friend, Preston Miles, to say he’s arrived. Preston is also coming back to lake town for Rachel’s wedding. I haven’t seen Preston in maybe a year or more. He is in DC now permanently and I am in Boston. We did at one time live together in a small Boston apartment when Preston was at Harvard and I Berklee School of music but I pushed him to DC with my neurotic notions of independence and individuality. As friends we’ve been exposed to the raw skin of each others emotions, him seeing my father murdered, the way he did and then standing by me year after year trying to protect me out of obligation and pity. I needed to set him free, he was the caterpillar that had transformed into a butterfly that I kept in a jar.

However, I miss him and am anxious to see him again.

Tina Galloway is a writer and social innovator that lives in Charlotte NC. She is the author of The Corner between my Life and Hers , lectures & writes health and social commentary for Healthknots an innovation agency.