Everything Holds a Place
I have a small action figure in my office that I played with every day as a kid. I think it was from an emergency show, but if so, I don’t know why he looks like a redheaded lumberjack. Either way, he carries my childhood inside of him like a guy the size of Paul Bunyan who goes home to take care of a baby rabbit with a tiny milk bottle, and covers it in a fleece he cut to cuddle it.
My house is littered with memories of my parents because that’s all I can have and hold. I have an old video of my mom that I watch every five years or so, but I am not in it. It’s her talking to my stepdad while the dogs run around. It is the sharpest blade to the heart and the warmest ray of sun on my face at the same time.
I have a painting at the top of my stairs that my dad did. He was a secret artist. It has several naked ladies in it, as well as my dad and his friends who are fully clothed. If you knew my dad, this trends. There’s also a painting in the painting that I think we had in our house growing up. I feel like a nesting doll in the matrix when I look at it.
I have drawings across from my bed and smack in the middle of my living room, by my favorite artist of all time. It’s kind of a crazy story. My friend, who was also in the art world with me at the time, finagled a studio visit for me with her. It was love at first sight. I was obsessed with the art as well, but I already knew that. A blur exists in my life where we were together. It was magical and tumultuous. I will never take down the drawings.
I broke up with my girlfriend at a b’nai mitzvah when I was thirteen. It still may have been the worst thing I have ever done. It was heartless and cold. I didn’t know I was on the spectrum then, and I didn’t know why I was doing something I didn’t want to do. I was selfish, rife with Aspergers, and awash with self-loathing. I still have the letter she wrote me when I got back to California.
I still have two practice jerseys from my college basketball team. The reversible blue-and-gold tank top used to stink after hard practices. It’s been washed a million times, but I can still smell the faint odor of camaraderie on it. I wear the T-shirt more often because it’s more comfortable, but also because a 55-year-old man shouldn’t be wearing a college, mesh-adjacent tank around town.
I have rocks and shells in a glass vase in my living room that my kids and I picked up off the beach in Sag Harbor many summers ago. When they catch my eye, I can still see us laughing, bending, and sizing up the options with sandy toes and abject freedom. Even though they are adults, I can sometimes see them as the smaller version of themselves. I miss that time.
I have all of my criminal files from when I had my criminal defense practice. I only had to keep them for seven or ten years, I think. I think the giant Container Store plastic box holds a novel in the scribblings of crimes and alibis. I haven’t looked at them in years, but they sit in an orderly box waiting to be uncovered again.
I found my dad’s admission to the practice of law in a frame yesterday. I am going to put it up on a wall somewhere. It’s just writing, but it’s not. Nothing is just something. I told my son about how I used to use my badge when I was a prosecutor, and he laughed and thought it was cool that the movies would give us a law enforcement discount. I have the badge framed somewhere. It’s going back up on a wall somewhere also.
© Jonathan Greene, September 9, 2026
