Old High School Yearbooks Poem by Jenny Kalahar

In Mr. Torkelson's garage
Behind rolled and stacked white wire fencing
On a wooden shelf next to nineteen-eighties half-used oil cans
And blue coffee tins of screws and nails
Back where dust-drenched cobwebs
Have not been disturbed for decades
I found four old high school yearbooks

I was told I could take anything
He was moving into a nursing home
We'd been nodding neighbors for twenty years or so
Nodding hello, waving hello, saying barely any more
I knew I'd miss that arthritic hand
Raised to me across our lawns
That long, thin, friendly face
And tender, caring eyes
So I had to say more than just hello
When it was time to say goodbye

I knew he'd been a gravedigger, a carpenter
A roofer and did some clock repair
I knew his wife had passed two years ago
And that she'd left him here
And that without her he had shriveled some
Half his soul had slipped away
But that was all I knew of my neighbor
of Mr. Torkelson that day

I could have used his lawn mower, hedge trimmer
Cans of paint
I eyed the tools he'd kept so clean
Hung on pegs against a wall
The big blue tarps might come in handy
His rakes and shovels looked like new
But my heart pulled me to that wooden shelf
To those brown yearbooks in the back

I leaned around the fencing
Grabbed all four down in one hand
I tucked them underneath my arm and left the garage
And sat down on an iron lawn chair
I sat for nearly half an hour right out there in the sun
On the seat Mrs. Torkelson had loved
And I learned about my neighbor man at last
When he was known as Ted

There was a photo of him on a painted court
Basketball in his young hands
One of him with a gang of pals
Arm-in-arm against the school
And there was Ted at a chalkboard
Writing numbers with a wink
Another showed him by himself
Painting a still-life in art class

He seemed to be everywhere in candid photos
In sports photos, his smile so
Free
His freshman buzz-cut lengthening
With each year throughout his teens
Until I reached his senior book
And saw him at his prom
Holding the future Mrs. Torkelson
An Army uniform was on
And short again his curling hair
And straight his back even in mid-dance
He had a faraway look, not at the camera for once
As if he saw something coming
Something difficult

And on the very last page of the very last yearbook
A group shot of several graduating boys
Dressed as men, in military suits
I could hardly find that dear, young Ted
He was not the boy I'd seen
In every yearbook until then
Below, in flowing, flowery handwriting
A note was left for him:
"Come home to me, my Theodore
And make me Mrs. Torkelson"

I sighed and closed that yearbook
And then went up to the house
When he answered I was crying still
Missing a man I could have known
I gave him those four yearbooks
Kissed his cheek and said goodbye
And I went across the street and knocked
To visit Mrs. Remington at last