Stosh and Me
Jesus, Anglo Saxon version
I will never know if meeting Stosh was a near miss or a sacred encounter. I met him in the parking lot of a church, you see, a parking lot. Of a church. A church that my sister and I went to escape the wooden sermons and boring hymns of our parents’ church.
My sister drove our shared car – a red 1972 Ford Pinto hatchback. One that our father brought home announcing we would share it and pay him $400. Never mind that I was only 15 and didn’t have a license yet. Jan drove me around in it until I turned 16 and got my license. Sharing it then became a burden because we both had boyfriends and no longer socialized together. By the time I was standing in the parking lot of this church, and seeing Stosh walk toward us for the first time, I was 17, a senior in high school, and had been dating my boyfriend for three years. I was sure that I loved him (my boyfriend), and that we would marry and have many children together.
Stosh was handsome in the way that Anglo-Saxon pictures of Jesus are handsome: dark hair flowing to his shoulders (it was 1976), a smile that invited a smile in return, and brown eyes with a penetrating gaze that made me feel as if he knew me from another time and place. He had only one arm.
I never asked him why. Why did he approach me in the parking lot that day? What made him show up week after week to sit with me on a hard wooden pew when I offered no encouragement. No kindness returned. And why he came to my high school graduation. That night, I was broken-hearted because my boyfriend was a no show. But there was Stosh. Kind-hearted and gentle, to offer me a congratulatory hug.
Flash forward two years. I am at the Minnesota State Fair with my husband and one year old son in a stroller. We are pushing through the throngs of people on a sultry August day, when suddenly, the crowd parts like the Red Sea, and standing directly in front of me on the asphalt … is Stosh. Stosh, my one-winged angel, who lifted me up when I was so down. Stosh, who I scorned because of my loyalty to a boy … who would father my child in the loosest sense and then leave us.
Twice in my life, Stosh had seemingly effervesced out of the atmosphere. As if he had not existed until those moments. I never asked. Never invited him in. Never inquired about his life the way that friends do, or decent human beings.
I dreamt of Stosh on an off. One time, he was standing in front of the Vietnam Memorial in Duluth, a glass panel etched with the names of dead soldiers. In the dream, he turned to me and said, tapping the glass, “My name should be right here. Between my buddies. But I’m here. And they’re there.” And he turned, effervescing into the fog off the lake.
I wonder if Stosh is still on this earth. Or if he ever was. And some nights, I say it like a prayer, “I’m sorry. So sorry. I never really saw you.”
As I was working on my novel, THE VIOLET HOUR BOOK CLUB, I thought about how some people just show up in your life. Violet’s friend Audrey and her friend Virginia are like that. Her husband, Stephen, keeps showing up, too. Though he’s dead. I picture him effervescing like Stosh did for me — at critical moments — moments when Violet doesn’t even know she needs him, and doesn’t want to, because she’s mad at him. And not just for dying. Some people leave such a big impression, like footprints on your soul, that you can’t forget them. No matter how hard you try.
