Rain

It rained yesterday. I was in the car. I wanted to pull over, get out and walk in the sunshine that sparkled with droplets of water. It wouldn't last long. I didn't  . . . pull over. Instead, I rolled my window down and let the cool beads prickle my skin. Fantastic!
I've always loved rain and to be outside in it. No matter how dramatic the weather - if there was rain, I ran outside to play. Eventually, I suppose my Mother got tired of drying my clothes and around the age of five I simply put on my swimsuit before I went out if it was a tolerable temperature. If not, I wore rubber boots over my shoes that chafed my ankles and shins. The boots were clunky and made a difficult job of walking. Running was tempting disaster. Imagine trying to run with each of your feet stuck in a gallon jug of water.

There isn't much about rain that I don't like. I love the smell of it on the horizon. The drama of thunder in the distance and the possibility of something occurring that has simple purpose, relative unpredictability and the forceful power to envelope you, taunt you and allow you to survive and flourish within. I love the cool air that replaces the heat after a rain and the clean smell of dirt that reminds me of rainbows.
Of course, I was terrified of the rain at times. Most times, because some adult thought I should be. But . . . the grownups around me hadn't always shown the best judgment. I knew this even as a toddler so I didn't entirely trust them where the weather was concerned. Besides, I was the middle child which meant that I could pretty much do whatever I wanted and it went under the parental radar. Or, if my behavior was noticed for some odd reason, it never lasted long. For me, this meant that I had to be patient - and calculating. Eventually, I could carry on with whatever rejected activity that I liked, I simply had to wait until my parents we no longer paying attention to me enough to get in the way of my plans. My brother and sister are just beginning to understand just what a curse and a blessing the 'middle child' spot in the family provided me.

The reverse of this was that I (armed with the judgment and maturity of a four year old) made some mistakes. I got my teeth knocked out, I got lost and I put myself in dangerous situations - all because ignorance was truly bliss. Most times, I solved my problems on my own deciding not to involve my parents. Not that they ever offered to help, but instead chose to lecture me for hours when a simple, "I told you so" could take the place of all that  . . . rationalization. What they did say succinctly and directly was, "I'm disappointed in you." You can see why I kept to myself.

Outside, in the rain, I was almost always assured to be by myself - in peace. Nobody else wanted to be there sloshing in the gutter or challenging the rising current of the ditch. On one occasion, it rained so hard and so consistently that the neighborhood flooded. The streets were entirely blocked by water raining faster than the street drains could whisk away. This was one of only two times that I can remember any of the other neighborhood kids coming out to play in the rain as well. The other was when Jeff McGrath almost died because he was playing in the ditch during a rainstorm.
I never heard or don't remember how he slipped and fell into the current, but he did. The ditch, which was normally entirely docile four inches deep had transformed into a tumultuous 60 inches of rolling, debris-laden, muddy muck that was moving faster than it ever had as it raced toward "the tunnel".
The tunnel was a pair of 50-yard long cement tunnels that on almost every other day, a kid could easily walk through it. The ditch offered every kid a covert way to disappear from the newer section of the neighborhood and miraculously reappear in the older section two streets over. About half way through, each tunnel broke off into a much smaller tunnel that kids had to crouch to fit in. These were really intriguing because nobody knew where they ended up. There was literally no light at the end of either of these paths. Tempting.
Both ends of the main tunnel were flanked by mud easements, pseudo-shanty-style forts that neighborhood kids had erected in flood zones from whatever discarded material they could scavenge to escape oversight and scraggly trees which weren't worth any developers time or influence.

The McGraths were a large family with lots of kids all bearing tall frames, blond hair and "Kennedy-esque" faces along with genetically provided, enviable sports skills. They were handsome even when they were supposed to be awkward looking teenagers. All of them - even the girls. It wasn't normal. I stayed away from them.
Jeff was somewhere in the middle of that family. Who knows, maybe he was another middle child who went looking for adventure in the rain one day like I did. Whatever the reason he was near the ditch when it was at it's worst, he went into the water and through the tunnels. The ambulances came. His body was propelled through and came out the other side as the neighborhood parents gathered, watched and waited. The ambulances took him away. Later, my parents told me that he had survived. He was lucky.
From that day forward, the ditch - and the rain - took on a whole new set of characteristics. I loved them even more. Rain was definitely in control.

Disco-Ballerina

I shared this website with my son yesterday. He's 12. His immediate response (it literally took him all of nine seconds to soak in and analyze the entire blogsite) was, "You should have named it 'Discoballerina."
The aggravating part is . . . . I think he's right.
The name is so completely appropriate. How could he know this? His insight is uncanny!
Both my kids do this to me all the time - humiliate, belittle, leave me speechless and deeply impress me with their insightful nature simultaneously. How is it that I did not think of this on my own?

I loved ballet classes as a child. While all the other kids were disco-dancing at the roller rink, my sister and I took ballet class at an old mansion turned art center on the west side of the town.
My Mother wouldn't let me have toe shoes when the instructor suggested I be allowed to move to the more advanced class. I was five years old and my Mother thought that my feet would be irreparably and permanently disfigured if she allowed this transition. I begged. I cried. I nagged. She didn't budge. I had to be content to envy all my classmates that were allowed to grow while I drudged on in the lower class until I was in my late teens. By then, it was too late to move on.

I learned later, as an adult, that this would be just one of many disappointments and unreachable carrots that was placed before me and then yanked away just when I grew an interest.

My sister got the shoes.

Johnny Crumm

As kids, my brother, sister and I thought it was great that our parents left us alone to 'be kids' as much as they did. As an adult with kids of my own, I wonder with complete amazement how any of us made it past the age of three. We didn't know how good and bad we had it.
I suppose that the fact that we (me and my two siblings) are all very resourceful and independent is because of our parents consistent albeit convenient lack of oversight. At this point it's a benefit. However, the confusion brought about in our young lives as we grew into adults was tantamount to Vesuvius erupting. It was huge and it ruined everything. Now, once our childhood treasures have uncovered, they're still really beautiful, we just had to dig for years to find them again.

I remember scratching the backs of my legs on this fence all the time. Of course, that didn't stop me from climbing it. The fence was old, rusty and wobbly which made it difficult to climb. The only stable spot was right next to the solitary post that wasn't overgrown with vines that had tiny dark purple berries our parents told us were poisonous. Not that this would seem like a good reason to a parent to remove them from the yard - because kids might act like kids.
The top row of the fence was barbed wire and it ran the rear border of our backyard. Johnny Crumm lived on the other side in a tiny, white clapboard house with his grandmother. I hardly saw her - except once when Johnny invited me for lunch. She made us what today I would call "white trash sandwiches." Basically, these were inexpensive white bread, a single slice of American cheese and Miracle Whip.
Once in a while I'd see evidence of a biological male parent - not really a Dad. As far as I knew, his Mother didn't exist - anywhere. His Dad found his way home a couple times every year around whatever holiday was convenient. I always knew he was around because he  pulled up in a gigantic white Freightliner tractor trailer rig.
Johnny was as solidly sad little person - you could tell even as a little kid that this was his life. At least I had siblings who didn't completely ignore me. I don't think he really had anyone to pay attention to him.
My siblings and our pack of neighborhood friends roamed anywhere we liked and everywhere we pleased as kids. Apparently the fact that we were in our underwear didn't phase us at all.
What I just can't fathom as I look at this picture is why anyone who bothered to put a bandanna on my head (this is definitely not something I would have taken care of on my own) and a jacket on my body and then proceed to take a picture would let me leave the house without my pants on.
This is how it was in our house. The things that my parents did pay attention to seemed a little skewed and consistently irrational. We took full advantage while completely ignorant of the many dangers our little world contained.

The Lake

The cottage sat on the edge of a high ledge that had it not been covered in tall pines and poplars would have been called a cliff. The yard was level with the main floor of the house in back and a story and a half below in the front. I always got these two confused as a kid. The back of the house faced the road, but it was where the big gravel circular drive approached the house. There were two rustic archways constructed of perpetually oily railroad ties at both sides of the circle. No formal fence connected the arches. It was completely possible to get from the driveway to the house without going through either arch, but there they stood. The dogs were the only alarm system and they worked every time.
The front yard was littered with small pine trees that my grandfather had transplanted from the woods, but they generally refused to thrive under the outpouring of dog piss that any of the 13 free roaming pack habitually and continuously doused them with.
What I always thought of as the back of the house, but that was really the front was so much nicer. Shady and cool instead of arid and dusty. The lower lawn (across the deck and down a wide promenade of red-stained stairs) was always cool when your bare feet touched it and smelled like moss, pine resin, spider webs and leaves. It was a great secret place that stood right out in the open - hiding in plain sight. Under the porch that circled the house on two sides was the sliding glass door that led in to the walk-out basement. The steps down to the lake started here.
Each step was made from a unique piece of railroad tie. Doused in creosote and sand, no step was the same size. The land truly dictated how the steps were formed and where they meandered as they made their way to the dock and the end of the shore. There were 17 steps in all - tall, narrow risers near the top - shorter and wider as you drew closer to the water. Just before the bottom step a foot path crossed the steps. To the right was a boat launch where the pontoon boat was typically parked. My grandfather loved to fish or be the man of the house taking guests on a boat tour - I'm not sure which. To the left, was freedom.
We never swam off our own dock, we walked down the path, through the Birch and Black-Eyed Susans to the Birrups. They had sand instead of seaweed - and a dock long enough that you could run off the end if you got a head start on the lawn.
It was a short walk, but it was almost my favorite part of swimming. Or maybe, just seeing those brilliant yellow flowers with their sullen brown middles was tangible evidence that soon I'd be swimming. Another world unto itself that belonged only to me and my siblings. Parents very rarely ventured here. Never grandparents. This was our world - confiscated in a stranger's front yard.

A Parallel Universe

This is "the Cottage" - my grandparents house for the entire time I knew they had one. They lived in this house on the lake during frigid, stinging winters and the most oppressively humid summers.
The cottage rested on the shore of a man-made lake in Central Michigan. Poplar leaves blowing in the wind made a sound unlike any other tree. It is still the singular sound I associate with the cottage.
The nearest town was eight miles away and consisted of one traffic light, a police slash city government building, a library, a beauty shop, two pharmacies, a general store, a laundromat, a dime store, a soft-serve, a lumber yard and a tiny municipal airport. The only other two significant buildings had special names, The Eat and The Products.
The Cottage was a summer home that just happened to be occupied year-round. It really had a life of it's own and existed on a parallel plane with the city house I grew up in. The city house downstate was where business was conducted. People were serious, life was controlled (to the extent that two dysfunctional parents can execute anything resembling control). Adults did work and made plans to escape. At the cottage, the world opened up. The only important plan was to get through lunch without one of the dogs stealing the food off your plate. A big job when you're a tiny girl and the dogs out number you twelve to one but not one that was ever restricted to only include children. Everyone's plate was fair game. The loss of your food stung significantly more at the cottage than it did at our city house because the food was better - edible. There were store bought cookies, sugary cereals, HillBilly bread, Heinz Ketchup and steaks on the grill. My grandfather didn't buy "those bastard brands." It was the surprise at finding self-worth painted so plainly, clearly and without the slightest thought to personal humility - in such an unseemly place that made this other world so different than the one I lived in most times.
In the city, we had poor homemade cookies my Mom liked better burned. At least that was how she justified her resignation, homemade bread (half frozen, half thawed and soggy) homemade ketchup (don't ask) and hamburger gravy (again, too gruesome to relive in script) they were all good enough.

I had a dream when I was little that one of the dogs, the patriarch of the pack, bit my hand off and was chasing me in circles around the small living room while everyone else was just sitting on the couches like my dismemberment was nothing more astonishing than 'Archie Bunker.' I suppose having the food stolen off your plate or out of your hand (even with your hand attached) was no great cause for alarm. As well, the dogs were always given more while I usually chose to abandon myself to the park to sulk on the swings.
My brother and I made up a game called, "Bomb the Japs" to get back at them. As we pumped our little legs to reach so high that the swings chains began to sag and snap at the top of our hyperbola, we aimed our imaginary automatic machine guns at anything that moved. Typically it would be one or several of the unleashed, skunk scented dogs.
Our parents left us alone in the park until dusk - when they wanted to go to bed. We rushed home to fill our beds with the sand that clung to our feet and sleep until the next battle.

I have so many memories from the time when I was little. I mean really little.
One vivid memory I have is of watching my sister walk to school - leaving me behind at home.
She went to afternoon kindergarten so it was middle of the day when she left. That sleepy, quiet time when you have to work up the energy to think of something else to do the rest of the day. She walked the four blocks alone - a five year old.
I must have been just two years old if she was on her way to kindergarten.
The front door of our house was in a little alcove next to the garage door. The screen door was a pressed aluminum sharp-edged thing with three panes and a handle that pinched your fingers. An aluminum kick plate at the bottom with a texture that made the greatest noise if you rubbed it or scraped it (drove my Dad nuts one day doing that - almost as good as plucking the teeth of a comb only without the tinkly drips at the end), a glass pane in the middle and a screen in the top section. I think both the top two sections were interchangeable - glass or screen. Eventually the glass was changed to Plexi-glas when my sister put her arm through it as she chased someone outside.
I was just able to see over the aluminum section to the outside.
From the porch door you could see across the street, but only kitty-cornered as they say. Across the street was 'the Ditch." A place we played almost ad infinitum as kids. Anything and everything could be found in "the ditch." It was a drainage ditch that ran criss-cross through the neighborhood. The stream was never more than three feet wide and never more than a foot deep, but it held so many treasures, distractions, filth and tragedy  . . . well, that would fill an entire book right there.
I stood there - my two year old self - and watched my sister walk to school. Her back to me by necessity. She wore a red bandanna across her platinum blond hair. Her white shoes so visible against the green grass marking each step in her progress. She soldiered along the dirt path that bridged the gap in the sidewalk between Steve DeVore's house on one side of the ditch and that Barker kid who was always in trouble ("The children of single mother's are always bad news!") on the other. No man's land. Our own neighborhood demilitarized zone when we got old enough to have Fort Wars between the sides.
It was a beautiful, clear sunny day. The sky was light blue - too bright to be really brilliant and dark.
She'd be gone for hours.

Bad Hats

I wrote another book in grade school. It was called, "The Hat That Goes Looking for a Face." Imagine turning the whole fashion world on it's ear at age seven, but that's what I did.
The story followed a Hat that was looking for a face to complete it - to make it into something identifiable. I suppose if it were just a hat, it might as well live in a box, but with a face - it could live, be part of something, see the world - even if only everyone assumed it an inanimate, superfluous decoration.
The Hat finds many faces and goes through the process of trying on several. None are good until it finally finds one it likes. And there it is on the page in my skilled, seven-year-old style of drawing (we had to illustrate the books as well as write them). It's a wholeheartedly ordinary face with nothing that makes it distinct or unique at all other than the fact that it is proportionate to the hat - neither detracting or enhancing.
Well . . . none of the Hat's friends or relatives approves of Hat's choice. They say, "That's a horrible face" or "That face isn't you at all!" The Hat is discouraged, disappointed, annoyed and very sad. But despite their comments, Hat has made it's choice.
The story ends with the Hat unable to comprehend why those around it don't recognize the only face that it's comfortable being with. The Hat loves the nondescript face it chose and determines to keep it - despite the fact that everyone else hates it. The Hat knows who it is even if nobody else does and resigns to live a life of unmet expectations and disapproval knowing that this is the path it has to follow. There's simply no choice.

It's a heavy story for a seven year-old.

Smelt: A tiny, sardine-like fish

The Smelt was the worst. Of all the questionable (I'm being polite) meals my Mother prepared, this one far surpassed any of the others for it's inherent inedible-ness.
I remember this meal because it was also the most egregious departure from the succulent feast that we had been told it would be.

The grocery store that we always went to was on the corner of Middlebelt and 10 Mile Road in Farmington Hills. Great Scott!! (The two '!!' marks were actually a part of the name.) It was a grimy, tired neighborhood store with dirty tile and Styrofoam blue ice bins that smelled like mildew. The aisles were crowded, dim and a minefield of boxes waiting to be shelved. My Mom loved this store. She always said she liked her grocery stores small and dirty. Why would you want your family's meals to come from the infested store instead of the clean one? I'm sure there's a wealth of information there for some very bored psychologist.
I liked the A&P in town. It was clean, bright and smelled like bread and coffee. There were stock boys who actually straightened the shelves. But we stopped going there so often after the manager got shot inside the store. If I remember correctly - he died.

The smelts were packaged in a blue Styrofoam butcher tray, stretch-wrapped and tagged with a price tag - their silvery bodies smashed and folded to fit the container. Untrimmed, uncleaned fishes - fins tucked everywhere, eyeballs glaring and dripping their last. My mother was instantly elated when she saw them. You'd have thought she had found salvation right there in the cold case. My thoughts leaned more toward the, "Define 'good'" but I left them as thoughts. I still trusted her.
When we got home we prepared to make smelt. She told me it would be time consuming, but worth every effort. Again, I believed her.

Of course I got the job of cleaning the fish. I stood there in front of the big enamel sink slitting bellies and watching fish guts slip down the drain. My hands were small so manipulating the tiny bodies was easy, but I hated it. When my grandfather and I fished, I always left when it came time to kill and clean the fish - sad and disgusting. I've never been a good at being a carnivore.
Once the fishes were washed, my mother took them and breaded them in some concoction of moist starchy glob and threw them en masse into her prized Wagner frying pan. In retrospect, it was at this point in the cooking process where the whole meal literally should have and figuratively did go to the dogs.

My Mother has always been a lazy cook. Actually a reluctant participant in raising her family might be a better albeit broader description. She made dinner and everything else when she was ready and according to her schedule, not when it was appropriate or necessary. If she had time to make fried chicken at 2pm - she did. Then she let it sit in the grease at a temperature just warm enough to keep it from poisoning us all later (who wants to take care of a bunch of whiny, puking kids all night long?). Dinner was around 5:30pm. That chicken had three and a half hours to sit there, soak up grease and burn on the one side that maintained contact with the pan. It was yummy! Not!
Most of her dishes were that way, but some weren't impaired by her style (think Spaghetti sauce).
Just imagine what happens when you apply this technique to smelt. In case you can't, here's what happened.

The smelt, instead of becoming the crispy, delicate, ivory pieces of succulence that we were informed would appear, they were a massacred heap of lifeless, grease-laden corpses in varying states of deterioration and degradation. They had been cooked too long, too roughly, too together and too carelessly to ever be catapulted to the culinary delight they were so famously prepared for. Instead of eating, we worked - painstakingly maneuvering around needle-like bones, skin, heads and Crisco to get at the tiniest pieces of edible flesh.

I don't remember what else we had with them that night. Probably Jell-O, that would have been typical. Something that melted, ran into and crept under the fishes adding high-fructose-sweet, fruit, bitter-red-dye flavors and a warm syrup texture to the car wreck of tastes already in your mouth. The fish would achieve an entire new level of gross-ness with Jell-O. But never just plain, unadulterated Jell-O. I remember begging, pleading for plain Jell-O as a kid. Instead, and like most foods, it was altered as a condition of it's entry into the house. It had to be improved. It "needed something". She needed something.
The Smelt was definitely the worst example of a meal I can remember - and there were so many to choose from. Many close seconds.
I grew up believing that there had to be a better way.
This couldn't be how food was meant to be. It just couldn't.

There are all kinds of photo albums

I have a cedar chest in my room packed with photos. Occasionally, I have the energy and self-confidence to look inside and see the proof of what my life might have been and become forced to compare it to what it actually is - now. It's not often. Perhaps this is why I don't keep photo albums in public or at all. While these pictures are dear to me and I would never consider letting them go - I still can't always bear to look at them. Life passes so fast. I hate the "I should have" feeling that this activity leaves me with.
The only photo album that doesn't have quite this dramatic effect is in the upstairs attic of my parents house. It's not technically a photo album, but for me, it serves the same purpose. The attic smells of dry wood, sunshine, galvanized steel, cotton, wool, grass and dust. When you climb the narrow, tread worn stairs of this 150 year-old farm house, warmth and stale air descend over you like someone pouring them from a bucket onto your head. The solitary, confined atmosphere washes over you and soaks into your skin. Nobody ever goes upstairs, but it's ready in case they might.
The wardrobe sits in the upstairs landing - far too big for the tiny space it occupies. But it's there - very much like "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" waiting for the day when a person might want to look in or need something to take them to another place. It's filled with scraps of cloth - the past lives of clothes and the potential only visitors can see.
Sewing in my house was not a pass time, but a family tradition. We are a family of seamstresses. Some better than others, none better than my grandmother and each bringing her own perspective and artistry to the end result.
There are literally hundreds of scraps in every imaginable size, shape, shade, texture and pattern. No fewer that four generations and five families of clothing are represented. Even the smallest pieces were saved because each is attached to the memory of a specific date, an age or an event. The pieces are not cataloged or tagged with notes that describe what they were used for. Those interpretations are left to the inspector. But what I have found is that even these require perspective. Last summer as I looked through the pieces for memories that I wanted to take and literally hold, I found memories that I had forgotten about. I also found new memories. I discovered that scraps that I had known as play clothes had existed in previous lives as dress shirts or had been introduced to our textile library as drapery for a college dorm room or the lining of a travel trunk. Who'd have thought that cloth could have a vicarious life?
I brought home a bag of memory scraps and used them to patch a denim jacket that I've had since high school. I still wear it but my kids won't be seen with me when I do. Unlike the the entirely customized pieces of clothing that were made for me a child from the fabrics represented, the commercially produced pieces I wore are still usable. -All the uniqueness homogenized out of them during their mass-market styling. Mine might be the only denim jacket in the world that could potentially go out of style - because I touched it with uniqueness.
I believe the reason that this type of photo album is so much easier to live with is that the memories are still malleable. If I wanted, I could still change them into something new, something better, something useful instead of what they were.