Worth Writing

Around about October when the air had become really crisp I went out to carried away by the weather.  So small I was then.  So very small.  I would crawl under the stairs where the clothing barrels were and get my sleeping bag.  It was bright red nylon with a flannel lining, the pattern of which is just so oh barely on the tip of my memory…a yellow and brown something it was….and it had the sleeping bag smell.  Mother rolled them up like miniature hay bales and tied them with rough yellow nylon cording.  It took quite a while to undo the knots.

Making sure my mother was busy with something or other and completely distracted from me I would take a bear, a book, and the sleeping bag out the metal side door and into the backyard.  Just past the pale green aluminum shed on the right edge of the property was a row of enormous white hydrangea bushes, tall as trees, messy as hell, we call the blooms “snowballs” and threw them at each other in delight as the blooms burst and scattered everywhere.

I had to make sure there hadn’t been any recent rain because the ground got spongy underneath the hydrangeas and stayed icky sloppy for the rest of the season once throughly soaked.  Picking a spot sheltered from the October winds by the shed and just halfway under a hydrangea I crawled into my sleeping bag with bear and book.  It was so cold! The air was sharp against my face but my body was overjoyed by the soft warm flannel and fluffy insultation. 

Pulling the top tight around my chin I snuggled down onto my side with arms full of bear and book.  I would always intend to go out to read but ended up just holding the book to my chest.  I still love the feeling of literally curling up with a book against my chest, fingers jammed between the pages to hold my place, and drifting off into a fanstasyland of sleep.  And sleep always came to me there.  No matter what time of the day it was.  But first I would lie there for a long time enjoying the dichotomy of the crisp air on my face while my body was comfortingly warm.  I closed my eyes and listed to the sounds of the season.  I heard the wind shaking all the trees and bushes with their semi-dried up leaves and heard the squirrels, of which there were plenty, running through the crisp leaves on the lawn around me.  I listened to the sound of the far off traffic.  Sound carried so much farther on the clear sharp air. 

It didn’t take long to slip into a very peaceful sleep immersed as I was in the warmth and the fallish sounds and the scent of woodsmoke from all the neighbours fireplaces.  There was so little peace in my little world.  But I knew what real peace felt like.  Maybe it made the rest of the time harder on me than on my siblings because I knew how far I was from what I thought of as the natural good feeling.  Those moments were heaven where I blocked away all thought and feeling for the life I was living and slipped entirely into the delicious moment, floating sort of, free for a while, safe for a few minutes.  No matter how awful it got inside the house, I always knew, at least while I was very young, that the world around me was beautiful, that there was so much pleasure to be had if I could sneak away to grab hold of it, though never to keep, I knew that.

I enjoyed several hydrangea days when I was so wee wee small over the course of a couple or three years.  When I was old enough to go to school it became harder to detach entirely like that and just float away on the weather and the scent of woodsmoke and sound of scattering leaves.  Each time I was discovered by my screaming slapping mother who was infuriated that I’d left the house without telling her and had taken the sleeping bag without permission and dared to put it on the ground where it would get soiled.  The hydrangea days, like most days, ended very badly.  But they were important.  Very important.  They did some kinda magic on my soul, you know?  Made reality so sweet for just a while that it nourished me deep and good and long. 

Today, just a little bit ago, I wraped myself in that wool sweater again and sat on the peeling picnic table bench and lifted my face to the crisp lively air with head back and eyes closed.  Listening to the rustle of the leaves, the sound of far off traffic, the harumph of dogs playing around me, and inhaled the delicious scent of woodsmoke from my neighbour’s firplaces. 

My mother always came at me screaming, “What the hell are you doing?!”  She was always confused by my behaviour when I was very wee young.  I was known as a strange child.  I could never answer that question.  I wasn’t doing anything.  That was the point.  I was, I realize now, perfecting the art of simply Being.  It is sad that my Being was construed as something so wrong and earned so much anger.  But I got the healing experience logged in my soul first, unaffected by the following tirade. 

I am comforted to look back and realize how many ways and days and moments I did manage to escape the undeserved harshness of my life.   I was a fantasy-er.  I escaped into stories I saw unfolding before my eyes.  I watched them like movies, sitting ever so still for sometimes hours on end.  Not a way to live one’s whole life, but it preserved my humanness.

When I was a small girl I would wait until I heard my mother breathe the rythym of sleep, she was always the last one down, and then slip out of bed with a bear tucked under my arm.  By glow of nightlights plugged into the wall sockets in the hallway I made my way to the living room and felt in the dark for the heavy coffee table.  You didn’t want to run into that, boy, it’d gouge out a nice piece of flesh. I’d run my hand along the cold smoothe top of the clean wooden coffee table (mother was a neat freak, kept it spotless) to the end and from there it was one big step to the music.

I forgot about this for a long time.  Just last night the memory of the nights I’m describing to you came crashing in on me while I was half dozing in a chair with a warm knitted wrap around my shoulders, textbook open in my lap on a pillow.  It was a shock.  So real.  At first I questioned it.  Then…no…yes… remember. 

One big step toward the huge console.  It was a monolithic piece of furniture that hid inside it a radio an 8 track tape deck and a record player.  With my little feet snuggled into the pale green broadloom I lifted up the top all the way quietly making sure it wouldn’t slam down on me.  I’d reach into the dark console and by memory find the button that turned on the radio.  I had to make sure I had a hand on the volume dial to turn it down real fast in case mom had it on loud when she last turned it off.  I didn’t want to get caught.

I press the button and the console lights up.  I turn the volume down so low only I can hear it with my head stuck in there by the dim glow of the dials.  And I turn it to the country music station.  1320 CHAM And I am wrapped in the warmth of the sound of the voices of friends.  I knew all the night dj’s.  I loved to hear them talk about their lives and kids.  I loved them.  They became family to me listening there in the dark.  I longed for the sight of tall cotton and the sound of the whipporwill. 

I listened to the songs tellings stories of love and longing and regret.  It made me feel so human.  These country people loved children.  They adored them.  Children made all their holidays fun.  I wanted to be in a place where children were wanted, loved, enjoyed.  I was sure I could please those people I longed to be near.  I sang along quietly to all the songs.  I learned to talk all the different southern accents.  And I dreamed.

I concentrated as hard as I could until I could ’see’ the people in my living room and I would walk around and talk to them. I made up stories about lives I would live in the South if I could just get there.  Get away from where I was.  Where I wasn’t wanted.  Wasn’t safe.  In the night I would jump up and sit on the edge of the console leaning my face down toward the glow and take in The Grand Ol Opry and feel safe and warm and happy.  As long as I convinced myself I was one of them I had a bright happy future full of songs and animals and warm loving homes. 

At some point I would have to come back to reality. Back to the dark living room.  The need for silence.  I would quietly jump down and turn off the radio and reaching up close the lid for another day.  Me and my teddy bear would shuffle back to the bedroom and snuggle down deep under the covers, my head filled with voices telling me about places I wished to be, where I would be safe and loved.  To this day I have a tendency to break into a southern drawl while writing.  Tis the music, y’all.  Them country people raised me up.

steph