Introduction
At twelve, I worried about a skinny road between two precipices. Every day my mother drove on such a road, or so I imagined, to her job teaching school. I feared her car would slide off one side, into a ditch, or off the other edge, into a murky gray river. But I never told her what I was scared of. I worried day after day without mentioning my fear to anyone, till there was a fist in my stomach, punching me back again and again to check the clock. Wasnât she late? I was a nervous wreck in secret.
I did not want to be thirteen, which cast me as something of an oddity among my friends, who were practicing with lipstick and the ratting hair comb deep into the belly of the night. Mary couldnât wait to be thirteen. She stuffed her bra, packed away her dolls. Susie had been pretending she was thirteen for two years already. Kelly said thirteen was a lot more fun than anything that preceded it.
But I did not feel finished with childhood. I was hanging on like a desperado, traveling my own skinny road. The world of adults seemed grim to me. Chores and complicated relationships, checkbooks that needed balancing, oppressive daily schedules, and the worrisome car that always needed to have its oil or its tireschanged (âbald tiresâ sounded so ominous) . . . Couldnât I stay where I was a bit longer?
I stared at tiny children with envy and a sense of loss. They still had cozy, comfortable days ahead of them. I was plummeting into the dark void of adulthood against my will. I stared into the faces of all fretful, workaholic parents, thinking condescendingly, You have traveled too far from the source. Canât you remember what it felt like to be fresh, waking up to the world, discovering new surprises every day? Adulthood is cluttered and pathetic. I will never forget.
I scribbled details in small notebooksâcrumbs to help me find my way back, like Gretel in the darkening forest. Squirrels, silly friends, snoozing cats, violins, blue bicycles with wire baskets, pint boxes of blackberries, and random thoughts I had while weaving 199 multicolored potholders on a little red loom. I sold the potholders door to door for twenty-five cents each, stomping around the neighborhood, feeling absolutely and stubbornly as if I owned it. No one else had ever loved that neighborhood as much as I did.
If I wrote things down, I had a better chance of saving them.
Recently, a friend sent me an exquisite wreath in the mail. A tag was attached to it: A SMALL AMOUNT OF DEBRIS IS TO BE EXPECTED FROM THE VIBRATION OF SHIPPING.
Well, of course.
But who tells us this when we are twelve? Who mentions that the passage from one era into another can make us feel as if we are being shaken up, as if our contents are shifting and sifting into new alignments?
Earliest childhood: skillets and a fat soup pot and two cake pans and a funny double boiler with lots of little holes in one pan, lids and a muffin tin and two blue enamel spoons and an aluminum sifter with a small wooden knob on its handle, all living together in the low cupboard next to the stove.
A trove of wonders! Daily I was amazed and happy to take them out, stack them on the floor, bang them together a little, make a loud noise. Then I could put them back. There were ways they fit and ways they didnât. The door to the cabinet never shut perfectly. I can close my eyes even today and feel its crooked wood, its metal latch, and the lovely mystery of the implements living in silence inside.
My mother worked at the sink nearby, peeling potatoes, running water over their smooth, naked bodies. I felt safe. My whole job was looking around.
It strikes me as odd: I cannot remember the name of a single junior high school teacher. I cannot remember any of their faces either. Yet I recall all my elementary and most of my high school teachers very clearly. What happened in between?
In junior high, I stood proudly in the percussion section in the school band,
At twelve, I worried about a skinny road between two precipices. Every day my mother drove on such a road, or so I imagined, to her job teaching school. I feared her car would slide off one side, into a ditch, or off the other edge, into a murky gray river. But I never told her what I was scared of. I worried day after day without mentioning my fear to anyone, till there was a fist in my stomach, punching me back again and again to check the clock. Wasnât she late? I was a nervous wreck in secret.
I did not want to be thirteen, which cast me as something of an oddity among my friends, who were practicing with lipstick and the ratting hair comb deep into the belly of the night. Mary couldnât wait to be thirteen. She stuffed her bra, packed away her dolls. Susie had been pretending she was thirteen for two years already. Kelly said thirteen was a lot more fun than anything that preceded it.
But I did not feel finished with childhood. I was hanging on like a desperado, traveling my own skinny road. The world of adults seemed grim to me. Chores and complicated relationships, checkbooks that needed balancing, oppressive daily schedules, and the worrisome car that always needed to have its oil or its tireschanged (âbald tiresâ sounded so ominous) . . . Couldnât I stay where I was a bit longer?
I stared at tiny children with envy and a sense of loss. They still had cozy, comfortable days ahead of them. I was plummeting into the dark void of adulthood against my will. I stared into the faces of all fretful, workaholic parents, thinking condescendingly, You have traveled too far from the source. Canât you remember what it felt like to be fresh, waking up to the world, discovering new surprises every day? Adulthood is cluttered and pathetic. I will never forget.
I scribbled details in small notebooksâcrumbs to help me find my way back, like Gretel in the darkening forest. Squirrels, silly friends, snoozing cats, violins, blue bicycles with wire baskets, pint boxes of blackberries, and random thoughts I had while weaving 199 multicolored potholders on a little red loom. I sold the potholders door to door for twenty-five cents each, stomping around the neighborhood, feeling absolutely and stubbornly as if I owned it. No one else had ever loved that neighborhood as much as I did.
If I wrote things down, I had a better chance of saving them.
Recently, a friend sent me an exquisite wreath in the mail. A tag was attached to it: A SMALL AMOUNT OF DEBRIS IS TO BE EXPECTED FROM THE VIBRATION OF SHIPPING.
Well, of course.
But who tells us this when we are twelve? Who mentions that the passage from one era into another can make us feel as if we are being shaken up, as if our contents are shifting and sifting into new alignments?
Earliest childhood: skillets and a fat soup pot and two cake pans and a funny double boiler with lots of little holes in one pan, lids and a muffin tin and two blue enamel spoons and an aluminum sifter with a small wooden knob on its handle, all living together in the low cupboard next to the stove.
A trove of wonders! Daily I was amazed and happy to take them out, stack them on the floor, bang them together a little, make a loud noise. Then I could put them back. There were ways they fit and ways they didnât. The door to the cabinet never shut perfectly. I can close my eyes even today and feel its crooked wood, its metal latch, and the lovely mystery of the implements living in silence inside.
My mother worked at the sink nearby, peeling potatoes, running water over their smooth, naked bodies. I felt safe. My whole job was looking around.
It strikes me as odd: I cannot remember the name of a single junior high school teacher. I cannot remember any of their faces either. Yet I recall all my elementary and most of my high school teachers very clearly. What happened in between?
In junior high, I stood proudly in the percussion section in the school band,
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