Thanks, Mom

Prompt: Indulge in nostalgia

I don't normally think about the positive things I associate with being a kid. My childhood is filled with half-gratified desires. I often think about how hard I had it. I always had questions that needed answering, and I longed to grow up so I could be taken seriously.

The library. As a child, my room had lots of picture books, and we were always at the library swapping them out. We rented movies from there, too, especially during the summer. I remember the first time I saw Princess Bride. My brother was skeptical that it was going to be "a girl movie" (ha!!). It should go without saying that we were both entirely satisfied by the viewing experience.

Midnight Snack. How it got started, I don't know. And it was never actually midnight when my mother indulged our young cravings for sweets. She put a few Graham crackers out with cups of milk. I became a pro Graham-dunker. Good job, Mom, on not giving us fruit snacks or candy at that hour. She knew nutrition, even if our babysitters were sometimes less than aware.

Reading to us.Why does no one read to me now? It's so comfortable and cozy to sit and listen to someone else's voice, on and on. As I rested my head on her side, I closed my eyes and heard her voice, swallowing my thoughts and spooning a thin layer of honey all over the world. She read to us before bed almost every night, when she wasn't working, of course, and she'd dismiss us to bed with, "first one to bed gets first hugs'n'kisses!" We scrambled for our rooms, and made such a fuss if she didn't judge correctly the "winner" of the game.

"Go outside and play." In my imperfect memory, Stephen always seemed to be outside with his friends, riding bike, or skateboarding, or playing street hockey, or... many other mysteries. None of my friends lived in town for a long time, so I confined myself to the yard, learned nothing there, and felt lonely. But at least I was outside, and so was Stephen, usually. Once, though, I recall he and Logan and Danny (together, the Three Musketeers, but without the noble intentions or code of honor) were playing in the basement. They were there for a long time, and finally came upstairs giggling. They had spray-painted their initials on a yellow, metal cabinet, long unused, in the tiny work room. The fumes had been getting to them, but they also thought that they were the cleverest little rascals to ever strategically spray paint their initials. The "LSD" cabinet remained in the house for a long time.

"Why don't you stay home tonight?" In high school, my mom would tell me that I couldn't go out, just because "you've already gone out three nights this week. It would be a good night to stay in." I so little understood how much my bitter, "But why?!" could have hurt her. My "why?" to the request to stay home implied so much: that I wanted to get away from her and the family, that I didn't think they were worth my time, that I had better things to do, better places to be, in short, that I didn't value my home community and consider it worth my contribution.

I wish more parents would tell their kids to stay in a few nights a week. When I tell it to dorm students, they are frustrated. They say things like, "It feels like I'm in prison!"; "I hate this place!"; "Why do you want to control me!?" But by the end of the year, they realize that the time they spent here was valuable. They wish they had spent more time getting to know the other students and advisers. They realize that this was their home for a while, and wish they had owned it more, contributed more.

If You Come Back

If you come back

I will write you a poem for every picture of a tree
you deign to send me.

I will go to see that stupid Hulk movie and find a replacement for work.

I will chat online for more than a few minutes: reviewing our chats, I always seemed to be pressed for time.

I will sit with you in your Jeep on the way to your friend's wedding,
and let myself think about your profile against the sunset.

I will not run so hard or so far.

I will let you catch me, hold me, keep me.

But

I know I wouldn't

if you could

Come back.

Belleville

On Memorial Day weekend, I visited Stephen, Megan, Aida, and my Dad in Burnham. I had such a good time playing with Aida (nearing four years!) and her two friends, Braden and Cameron. I just loved rough-housing with them and pretending to be fish! On Monday Stephen, Meg, Aida and I spent the day in Boalsburg, the "birthplace of Memorial Day." They have lots of events and a carnival and vendors galore for Memorial Day--in all of the U.S., it was the place to be! My Dad couldn't join us because he wasn't feeling well, but we got to hang out together in Stephen's garden next to the creek below their house (prepositional overload!: out, in, next to, below). We didn't talk about anything new. My Dad likes to talk about guns, my brother likes to humor my Dad, Aida takes her mother's attention. I looked at the sunset as it shone golden and splendid through the trees just above us. Then the gold melted through the lowest-hanging branches into the dark trees lining a meadow across the creek. Creeks gurgle. They really do.

Driving out of Burnham an hour later, I decided to follow through with the plan inside my head since the night before: I would visit Belleville before turning home to Lancaster. Belleville is where I lived with Stephen and my Mom from ages one to six. I still remember the outline of the little town, although it's been over ten years since I last saw the place.

I wish I could better describe the reasons I had for visiting Belleville. I wanted to see Belleville with that self-conscious desire we all have to reread our favorite book as a kid: will it still be funny? will it still make me cry? will I still worry about the dog finding its real mother? I guess I wanted to check to make sure that there was indeed a reality at the center of the memories I retain of my first few years of life. I have a surprising number of memories for a child under the age of seven. I'm told we don't remember our experiences much before age seven. But I do! Sometimes I remember whole conversations. Off track.

I parked at Union Elementary and got out. I turned toward the school and to the area near a tree that the first grade girls used as stables for their My Little Ponies [TM]. I remembered a moment from first grade when I had brought my ponies to school to play with these girls. I came over with my tattered ponies, and asked to play with them. They refused, "No. You can't come play." I don't remember my reaction exactly, but I think it was shame and anger. I may have told them I would make them play with me. But instead I took my ponies and my heavy heart to the playground. Looking back at six-year-old me was strange. That hesitation and insecurity is not gone entirely, but what do I have at age 20 that I didn't have then? The ability to forgive those girls. So I did that, and committed to keep on doing that as I continued my walk through the past.

I went down the little hill of the school toward the lane leading to the Orchard Apartments. There was a stable (a real one) at the corner where I had always been so thrilled to see the head of an old gray horse protruding from a small window on the corner of the building. I walked around the building in the twilight, searching with a sense of eeriness for a phantom horse to pop his head out of one of the windows on the side of the stable. As I turned the corner, I gave a jump! A tall chestnut horse leaned her long head out of the window, nostrils at my eye level. It was the same jump as 14 years ago! She even consented to letting me rub her head as she licked my open palm, wondering where the food was.

I walked around little Belleville in the dusk, seeing only one other person the whole time. The town seemed to be deserted at only 8:30 in the evening. I headed back to my car as I noticed the baseball fields past the school. I headed up the footpath and watched the mountain pull down the very last remnants of color from the sky. But the only song I could think of was about a lakeshore, not mountains. So I sang it anyway, and headed to the car, and to 322 Eastbound, and to Lancaster, and my feather comforter, and statistics homework.

I've been working on this thought for a while now, and it's so simple. Life is building. Each day adds another brick to the structure, and only repetition will create something, good or bad. But how quickly we find ourselves in a whole other wing of the building that is ourselves! There's an uncontrollable continuity of the bricks: each day is 24 hours. And sometimes it seems as though whole months are exactly the same, one after another. But we are moving very quickly, I feel. Even if the scenery looks the same for a while. This may not make sense yet, due to the conflicting metaphors that I have tried unsuccessfully to avoid. But I may revisit this "aloud" in the future. In the words of my stats teacher, "this is just something I love to think about!"