Before The Potion
There is my uncle
in somebody’s home movie,
standing in front of a cardboard laboratory
with enough scientific equipment drawn on it
to satisfy absolutely no licensing board.
He is young.
Skinny.
Glasses.
Hair.
Lots of hair.
He drinks the potion
because apparently nobody in this laboratory
has heard of FDA approval,
and suddenly he is grabbing his face,
staggering around the room,
becoming a wolf.
Jekyll and Hyde
on somebody’s living-room budget.
And he is funny.
That is what catches me.
Not the wolf.
Not the potion.
Not even the acting,
which is being performed with the commitment
of a man who has been assured
there may be refreshments afterward.
It is him.
This loose, ridiculous,
completely unguarded version of him.
I didn't know him.
I knew my uncle.
That sounds like the same thing.
It isn't.
I knew the man who was a good son.
I knew the man who,
after Grandpa died,
opened a car door for me
while Grandma was looking at gravesites.
It startled me.
I had spent enough years believing
he barely noticed I existed
that basic courtesy suddenly felt
like a plot development.
So naturally I said thank you.
Apparently I startled him too,
because I don't remember getting
another door opened that afternoon.
Fair enough.
We both tried something new.
I also knew the man
whose email arrived
after Grandma's car became
one more family decision
that somehow contained
twenty years of history.
Grandma had told me herself
I could have the Camaro.
And maybe a car
should just be a car.
Metal.
Engine.
Keys.
Except I had driven Grandma on errands.
Cleaned her house.
Stopped by more times
than I could count.
I had watched her do things
other people found ridiculous
and knew there was still a woman
behind the performance.
Other people laughed.
A cousin once put
a KICK ME sign on her back
in public.
That kind of thing stays with you.
So when I was told
to hand Grandma's keys to him instead,
I didn't see keys.
I saw every grocery run.
Every check-in.
Every ordinary afternoon
that nobody keeps a ledger for
until suddenly you wish you had.
Then I saw liquor bottles in the car.
I knew he wasn't going to baby it.
And something in me decided:
Fine.
Keep the car.
Keep the email.
Keep the whole mess.
And I kept my distance.
Fourteen years is a long time
to stay away from somebody.
Long enough for the original anger
to lose some of its edges,
while the distance itself
becomes normal.
Eventually you're not waking up
deciding not to see someone.
You simply don't.
And another year passes.
Do I regret it?
Some of it.
I regret staying angry
as long as I did.
I don't regret
not going back.
Those are different sentences.
I've finally learned
they are allowed to sit beside each other.
My sister has her memories of him too.
Her conclusions.
A Thanksgiving.
A question he asked.
Something she heard in it
that told her something about the man.
I'm not saying she remembers it wrong.
I just don't know
that one sentence gets custody
of an entire human being.
Neither does my car story.
Neither does an email.
Neither does a door held open
and then apparently retired
after one successful performance.
People are inconvenient that way.
They refuse to stay
inside the paragraph
we've written for them.
And now here he is again,
young,
standing beside
his cardboard laboratory,
holding up his potion
with that enormous grin.
He drinks.
He changes.
He becomes the wolf.
Everybody laughs.
And watching it decades later,
I find myself thinking
the transformation happened backward.
Because the wolf
isn't the part I hadn't seen.
I knew guarded.
I knew complicated.
I knew difficult.
I knew the man
who could leave me angry enough
to stay gone for fourteen years.
What I had never seen
was the boy before the potion.
The one willing to look stupid.
The one laughing.
The one performing
for his friends
without seeming to worry
how much of himself
was showing.
Somewhere along the way
that boy learned to hold something back.
Maybe that's why drinking
seemed to loosen him later.
I don't like that answer.
I don't have to.
But I understand the temptation
to find something—anything—
that turns down the volume
on whatever tells you:
Don't be ridiculous.
Don't be vulnerable.
Don't let them see you.
And perhaps that's what makes
this ridiculous little movie
mean more to me
than whoever filmed it
could possibly have imagined.
It doesn't explain my uncle.
I'm glad it doesn't.
I've had enough people
explained to me
in one sentence.
It doesn't erase the car.
It doesn't unsend the email.
It doesn't give me back fourteen years
or make me wish
I'd spent them differently.
It just gives me something
I didn't have before:
another layer.
A boy in glasses
standing beside a cardboard laboratory,
laughing before he drinks the potion.
And for a few flickering minutes,
before life taught him
whatever life eventually taught him,
there he is—
not the uncle I was angry with,
not the man my sister remembers,
not the good son,
not the drinker,
not the person who opened my door once
and apparently decided
his gentleman quota had been met.
Just him.
Before the potion.
Before the wolf.
Before any of us got old enough
to mistake the version of someone
we happened to know
for the whole person.
Although one thing apparently
didn't need years to develop:
the man could pull off a mustache
even back then.
Some things, it turns out,
I did know about my uncle.
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