Trees but not Stairs

I went to lean
But the wood crutch was gone
I meant to brace my fall
But the banister too was not where it had been
Alone in the open space of myself
I tumbled
Collapsed to the ground
Landing in a field of soft grass that was me
There, nose to the earth
I feel in love with the smell
Until I lifted my eyes
To see much more than grass
And realized that I was meant to climb trees
And not stairs

The Babysitter

Most people can’t or don’t remember life before their second birthday. According to several scientific studies, a child’s memory does not fully develop until the child reaches 18 months of age. This period of cerebral development is termed “infant amnesia,” a segment of life that is lost to the liver, but despite science and despite the fact that most people lack the ability to conjure up memories from their infancy, I remember being two. Sitting on the living room couch of an unfamiliar apartment, listening to the husky sobs of a disappointed child, these early memories make their way back to me.

I remember throwing fits, lying on the floor, my body convulsing with each sob.  I’d cry until it physically hurt. When my stomach refused to release any more earth-shaking screams but I was not yet willing to give in and forget my disappointment, I’d shudder breathe myself back to calm, spicing up my labored inhalations with an occasional sob. I would drag out the scene, trying to look as pitiful as possible, begging for sympathy.  When my performance reaped no response, I was forced to give up the act and move on with my tragic childhood.

What a life lesson. Isn’t that how it goes, grief and recovery, devastation and reform, war and reconstruction?  There are disappointments in life. There are sorrows, so cry if you need to. Get it all out, but when you’re done, pick yourself up and move on. What a thing to discover and at the ripe old age of two.

My mother was a great parent. Yes, I may have been mad at her, lying on the floor, making a fuss as a two year old, but she knew what she was doing. It was instinctive to her. She had an all seeing almost God-like response to everything and anything I could dish out, and as I remember it, her response to tears, screams, and pounding fists was no reaction at all. She would busy herself in another room and let me cry it out. My mother’s approach to my own past tantrums swims around in my mind as I decide how to deal with the child that’s raging in front of me now.

I elect to let it play out, so my pondering on the subject of temper tantrums is accompanied by a live performance, compliments of Robby Buckwald, the two year old chubby-cheeks who’s having a hard time adjusting to the absence of his mother and father as I babysit him this evening.  If only child services could see us, Robby’s face growing gradually redder and plumper with every scream and me, staring at him some three feet away on the couch, completely indifferent. I would probably be sterilized on the spot.  “No children for YOU!” they’d shout as they hustled me into a straight jacket and shipped me off to wherever it is they send people to be sterilized.

Looking at Robby, I’m not sure how much of a punishment sterilization would be. I’m more than thankful that my mother birthed me, and while going through the delivery alone not to mention providing years of financial and emotional support that a child demands is Olympic medal worthy, I’m not sure it’s something I would either succeed at or enjoy. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate children. They fascinate me. It fascinates me that I was once a child. 

I realize now how skewed my perception of myself was at age two. I felt like I do now, mature and capable, for the most part. Does Robby think of himself as an equal among adults? I used to. I think that’s what makes children so amusing, the juxtaposition of who they are to the world and who they think they are.

When I revisit that time of my life, I remember feeling like the person I am now. Things were bigger, the countertop higher, but I was still me. Since my years as a child, I’ve grown taller and heavier. I look different than I did then to be sure, but mentally speaking, what’s changed? I’ve learned how to communicate; that was a big step, first speaking, then reading, and writing. I’ve learned how to behave in public, no crying or screaming in public, no picking boogers in front of other people.

As I’ve got older, the lessons have become a bit different: refrain from discussing politics with your friends, avoid sharing your religious beliefs, lie and tell the woman in front of the mirror that the skirt she’s wearing makes her look ten pounds lighter. These are all skills Robby Buckwald has yet to acquire.

But were we so different, me and Robby? Maybe I wasn’t sobbing through streams of tears, maybe my eyes weren’t puffy and red, but inside I was screaming. Inside I was sniveling over the absence of my own parents. There were things that I wanted that no one would give me, and even though I was making an obvious attempt for sympathy, no one was comforting me. 

Just as I’m starting to construct my list of grievances, I notice that Robby isn’t crying anymore. He isn’t even in the room. I leave my place on the couch, and call his name a couple of times, to no answer. I scan the first floor looking for the edge of a pant leg or a lock of curly hair but to no avail. Where had Robby gone?

After another more thorough sweep of the first floor, I declare him missing in action. I sit on a stool in the kitchen for a moment and listen. There is absolutely no noise. I’m all out of ideas, so I decide to check the one place that I had previously ruled out as a hiding spot. The stairs were gated. There was no way he had crawled past, but there he was, sprawled across the cement floor of the basement.

The Porch

I woke up early again. I’m up to greet the morning most days. When I first get up, I avoid the porch.  I piddle around the house, straightening curtains, refolding throws, boiling water for tea, and washing the kitchen windows. I’m not out there in my chair, but I’m thinking about it. My mind hardly ever leaves its place on the porch.

 She told me once, “You know you can see the soul of most anybody you look in ta their eyes? Well a person look inta your eyes and they’d see you sitting on that porch.” 

What did I do out there, she always wondered? And thinking back, I can’t remember what I did. I swung my legs off the end of the chair (my feet didn't reach the ground back then); I watched my father struggle to replace the shutters, mow the grass, and talk with the neighbors. I didn’t used to do anything on the porch, but if she could ask me now what it is I do on the porch, I’d have an answer for her. I sit in the wicker chair I made that summer and pretend that she’s sitting beside me, and I try to forgive myself for staying on the porch that day.

Self forgiveness is the first and most vital step on the road back to a normal life. That is the only thing that I remember from my costly appointments with the shrink I talked to for several months following the incident. I decided that if that was all he could tell me, he didn’t need my money and I didn’t need his broken-record advice, however true it was. I have yet to find forgiveness waiting for me on her wicker chair, and I have yet to find my way back to a normal life.

My neighbors might say that I’ve lived a normal life. I married a man that made enough money for groceries each week and an occasional trip into the city. We had three children who grew up and moved out. During those years, I was almost convinced I was normal too. Now as an aged widow, living alone, a wound that never healed has resurfaced, and it’s almost like the months after the incident all over again. 

I try to recreate the time when I was too busy to think about the porch and all that goes along with it, so I muss things up around the house, creating distractions for myself. I've taken to leaving dishes out after dinner, so that I can clean them in the morning. I empty my closet before bed, leaving the blouses and sweaters crumpled on the floor, hopeful that some of them will be creased enough to need a good ironing in the morning, but last night there were no cloths on the floor. The dishes were clean. The windows were washed, and I woke up without an excuse to stay away from the porch.

The last time I walked out of bed and straight onto the porch I was a young adult. It was my first morning back in the house. I had just purchased it from my parents. They didn’t agree, said I ought to find my own place. I told them I would make it my own. I went on and on about how the house had so much potential. My father said it was the most I'd talked about anything for years, which was true, and so whether or not they believed my intentions, they sold it to me for much less than it was worth. 

I had no plans to reinvent the house I had lived in all my life. In fact, the idea of changing anything seemed a bit morbid, like drawing mustaches on the precious baby pictures my mother kept in a fireproof cabinet, but I felt that I owed it to them to try. I striped the wallpaper and re-stained the hardwood floor. Visitors marveled at the transformation. They congratulated me on my good eye and elegant taste. Someone offered me the number of their colleague, who was in the business redoing fixer-uppers. They wanted to believe I was finally enthusiastic about something, but I bought it for the porch.

Even though that was years ago, this morning feels suspiciously similar to that time of my life, almost like being whisked back into childhood memories from a whiff of my mother's hair. Fog is lazily making its way across the grass, and the sun is up on the other side of the hill, lighting the sky of the still dark valley. My knees bend carefully until my rear finds the familiar curve of the chair. The seat is perfectly formed to my shape, the material thin and supple. I wonder about the day it will break and I’ll fall to the ground, calves and forearms flailing above the hole I've fallen through. Would I sit in her chair then?

The screen door squeals, the sound it makes when opened from the inside. I live alone, no cats, no dogs; even the mice find other houses to visit. Usually I'm somewhat paranoid about movement inside the house, but on this morning, it doesn't alarm me that there might be someone walking onto the porch from inside my house. I swivel my neck as far left as it will go, and watch as my visitor walks into view.  

She looks around with attempted nonchalance as she takes in the porch and it's unchanged appearance. She’s uneasy as she always used to be standing there beside me; that was one reason I made the chairs. As she approaches the wicker seat to my left, I notice that she’s barefoot, a good place to start our conversation. My eyes travel from her feet to her face where I meet her gaze. I furrow my brow playfully, asking for an explanation for her lack of footwear. Her expression is blank, no answer. Instead, she takes her seat in the chair, tucking her bare toes underneath her and eliminating them as a topic for conversation.

Despite the subtlety of our wordless exchange, I feel derailed. I am no longer in command of the conversation. This meeting on the porch was different; we would not tease and giggle. With my first question hanging in the air unanswered, it seems there is no room in the small atmosphere of us to place my next question. So instead of speaking, I wait in submission for her to take the conversation where she will. I watch her; her dark smooth skin taught and healthy wreaks of youth. I look at my own skin, a blanket of pale grey flesh hanging from my bones. The silence breaks with the rustle of her hair as she turns to face me. We absorb one another. She does not take my hand; she does not smile. She does not speak.

I used to think that there was something I needed to hear her say, but I have since realized that I don’t need to hear anything. I need to know, and here she is in her chair. But I feel like a school girl all over again, sitting in math class scribbling down numbers, hoping that somehow I'm getting the right numbers, never sure never confident that I've got the correct answer. What if I'm reading her wrong?  

She looks at me, finally comfortable enough with the porch to let her shoulders slope easily into her arms. My own shoulders are tense as I wait. Time passes and something drips off my chin. I shut my eyes, damning the pain, blocking it's escape. Once I've reached a negotiation with my tears, I return to her eyes. The stolid expression on her face melts into something warmer, more familiar. 

It's the same face I saw as I watched her leave, sitting in my chair on the porch, as a child. A twitch of a smile crosses her lips, and she stands. She faces her chair, and for the first time, the imprint of an occupant’s body is visible on the tan tangled pattern of the seat. Smooth brown hands grasp either side of the chair, and she’s hoisting it into the air. The chair, now upside-down is above her. We lock eyes for the last time, and then she turns and leaves, chair overhead. I watch her descend the steps of the porch, and then they’re gone, lost to the morning fog, the girl and her chair. 

There's no need for tea this morning. The house is clean. I have nowhere to be, so I sit in my chair on the porch and swing my legs, forgiven.