A Splayed Fork

"if he couldn't make peace with his first family, then there was no way in hell things were going to work with the second one."

His life as a child was child-like. The worries he concerned himself with, ranged from the complex maneuvers he would need to take to weasel out of his clarinet lessons to the nail-breaking ways in which lego blocks stuck. He was a decade away from sex, half a decade from its allure, his depression, insecurities and self-doubt. His most memorable achievements were a tower of cardboard blocks as tall as his father, taller he thought, and learning to roller skate backwards. Most days were filled with Janes going to wells, sesame street and the warm, loving smell of his mother's cooking. There in the blue light of the white-walled kitchen, with the cool breeze would blow in through the tree outside of his fourth floor window, between the iron grates, carrying his mother's cooking, spicy, caring, and always redolent of his days in her womb. On the wall above his wooden seat, with its sturdy knobs and steady feet was claude monet yellow and oily, there to waft and soak in our mother's  broad warmth.