Friday, October 3

Memories.

a lemonade stand with my best friend Molly, in front of the grocery store around the corner from her house when we were 8 or 9. her mom was a progressive sort of woman (to put it lightly), so we did 99% of the work by ourselves. it was nice to learn how to problem-solve. we also sold homemade chocolate chip cookies to increase sales (plus the fun of baking), and when we got "too old" we even wrote the e's in "lemonade" backwards, to garner sympathy. i'm not sure, but i think this was my idea. at least, i remember being the one to write it out. it does seem strange that i would have thought of that. once a police officer came by and told us we needed a permit. i think that was the beginning of the end. we used to take our profits ten feet away to the Mexican restaurant and eat cheese enchiladas with red sauce. i remember the clear plastic tumblers of ice water were always sweating heavily onto the lacquered table. it was quiet, usually there was no one else around. fans lazily spinning above us. we always sat in the same window booth, and i would use tortilla chips to clean my plate of sauce, rice and beans, when i was done with the enchiladas. i think Molly thought that was weird. but i was always told to clean my plate.

Sunday mornings in apartment #5 (the first [& longest] place i ever lived), on a quiet street in Berkeley, California. my dad is blasting opera music from his bedroom. he has an awesome sound system. the dog (an akita) is lying in a patch of late morning sun on the cheap brown carpet. dust motes stir and settle, stir and settle, endlessly around her. beyond, in the kitchen, i can smell breakfast potatoes frying. rosemary, butter, pepper. that means there will be eggs, sunny-side up. and silver dollar pancakes if we are lucky. my parents will drink delicious-smelling coffee and mostly ignore each other. my dad will be jolly and smiling because of the opera and the sunday breakfast. sometimes, a lot of the time, he sings along. maybe my mom is sewing, or more likely she is on the small back deck watering the potted plants. my older sister is in our bedroom, plotting ways to get out of the house today. my little brother and i are probably playing a game, involving either action figures, a homemade fort, or the Nintendo. i can hear kids playing outside in the courtyard, and see the leaves rustling gently on the trees outside the obscured glass of our window. i can feel the wind in the trees, and smell the sap, and feel the tiny heartbeats of the birds who nest there and are flying away now, into the great cloudy-blue sky and the endless possibilities of the great wide world.

when i was one or so, and learning how to walk, i burned my left hand rather badly on our wall heater. the weird thing is that i actually remember it all: struggling out into the living room, wanting to show my mom how proud i was of myself: i'm walking! inching my way towards the kitchen. i could hear my mom's voice, so i was getting close. maybe i uttered a yip of happiness at that point, who knows anymore, but my mom came around the corner and saw me. i grinned hugely and ramped up my efforts, but her eyes got big and scared. "no!!" she rushed towards me in slow motion. my smile was instantly gone in the confusion. what's wrong? and then something, somewhere, began to register. my mom reached me, then, and pulled me away from the wall as fast as she could, grabbing my arm. i had stopped along my epic journey, and rested my chubby little hand square on the wall heater, which of course was hot hot hot. there was a charred pattern of stripes going across my palm and fingers in a horizontal fashion. i began to bawl. it was awful. my mom was visibly and audibly upset. in the healing process over the next days and weeks, i would suck and suck on my hand to get it to stop hurting, so my mom had to put a sock over my hand and tape it there. but apparently i would suck on the sock until it was cool and sopping wet, same difference. ah, childhood!

a Slip 'N Slide in somebody's backyard. a small dog yipping around us in the excitement. green, green grass, dark and bright, crushed beneath our heels. small rocks would lie silently under the yellow plastic, waiting to be found by our arms or torsos. a sprinkler waves back and forth forever, somebody's mom yells for us to turn the water off. puddles are forming, and light mud. it is sunny, but still not hot enough to warrant us being out in our bathing suits. goosebumps and threadbare towels in plastic chairs, we talk about the funniest slips, and then we run inside to drink milk and eat peanut butter sandwiches.

at my elementary school, we had a whole wall of honeysuckle on the southern end of the schoolyard's long fence. the particular bitter sweetness of the blossoms' nectar on my tongue had a power to stop time. sometimes i felt like recess was hours long. i would lie on the grass and make daisy chains from the tiny white and pink flowers there, a crown fit for a benevolent fairy queen. after a rain, the worms would come wriggling out from the dirt. the boys would stomp and kill them, so i would cut them in half at that special spot, and pray for two to form and reset the balance. there were licorice plants bordering a smaller edge of fence, that at certain times of the year would be studded with what looked like big gobs of foamy spit. our recess counselor showed us that if you looked closely enough, you could see the caterpillars inside. they were going to be monarchs. later we would see the big butterflies over our heads, but it was always hard to make the connection. now whenever i smell a licorice plant, i see a big orange-and-black beauty fluttering in my mind. when was the connection finally formed?

1 comment:

bird feet said...

These are lovely memories. Well-put, too, because I felt like I could have been having them myself. Mmm, enchiladas and honeysuckle...some of the glories of growing up where we did.