Drip Drip. . .

It is Friday evening of the weekend of Memorial Day. I think I have more to say, but the words are not streaming out like a dam just broke and I can't keep up with the water. They are more like little seepages, coming from all different directions. I threw my hat in the ring for an opportunity I'm not sure I want. My researching heart is in Weedpatch, California, full of photographs, music and stories of Oakie migrants. I am full of anticipation, sure I will find a way to tell another story that has not yet been told, but anxious to visit and have conversations on tape as I take new photographs, collect old ones and learn something new about an historical restoration taking place. And with this new project in mind, I am finding it is taking everything I have in me to turn my focus back to getting the final edits done so that my ten year long struggle to finish a book can finally go into production.

My grandmother and mother's heart are with my daughters, one who is in Greece right now, enjoying the final days of her long awaited honeymoon, the other in Oregon, as I await a Crystal Thursday post that may have new grandbaby pictures or Amanda's latest creative project too. I will see them soon, and I need to fill my breath with their presence, re-collect my little family and learn who my priceless little grandaughter is becoming.

My heart as a daughter and sister are loaded with memories and hopes of creating happy new ones when I see the parents who raised me and the extensions of that family, whomever is around. Lately I have been having recollections of playing outside. These days, when one thinks of someone as "outdoorsy", you might think of hiking, parachuting or getting some kind of workout. That is not the content of these memories. I spent most of my childhood outside, and that is probably why I have so much difficulty with the long Chicago winters that keep me more housebound than I would like to be.

I am thinking of jumpropes mastered, footballs thrown, pogo-sticks hopping, metal roller skates scraping, a unicycle ridden, hula hoops swirling, bicycles ridden and a front lawn, driveway, sidewalk, backyard patio, a fruit tree for each family member, Hector the dog, Gomer the duck and a dull end of a broomstick used in the dirt to "plant" watermelon seeds as I played "Johnny Appleseed". I also recall a roll of toilet paper we put in a large appliance box playhouse in case we needed it.

The childhood memories I have of being indoors are of worry for my brother, who got poison oak and mumps in an order I can't remember, but he was in misery and had to miss a lot of school. I remember the smell of calomine lotion used to soothe his swollen itches and trips to Cooley's pharmacy with Mom to pick up a different kind of salve that could help him get better. They are of my mother, who was laying down one day when I came home from school. She never laid down, so I knew her mother, who had been ill with cancer had passed away. Mom didn't have to say a thing but I hugged her that day and remember the den where she was, the blanket she had covering her, the hurt in her face and my own helplessness. I remember Grandma's sweet, round face that grew more skeletal as her disease overtook her.

Grandma had the prettiest smile and a gentleness about her that even in her sickness, was expressed with her face and soft, loving hands. I remember her beautiful gold hairbrush with the soft bristles, a hand mirror and comb that sat on a vanity in her home. I have always wanted a vanity because of that. It was made of a kind of wood that showed the twists and roots of an old, wise tree. The vanity had a mirror and little seat and a round "box" of powder that had a puff in it. I would sit on the seat, brush my long, thick hair and gently pull open the powder lid to find a soft, round puff and imagine that I was Grandma sitting there, putting powder on my face.

I had a little wooden soldier in primary colors Grandma had given me. It had a red string with a yellow ball on the end that when pulled, little wooden arms and legs went flying up. When I visited Grandma in the hospital with Mom, I felt important because she wanted me with her to "keep her company" when she went to Redlands to see her mother. I remember Polly, the only doll I ever liked except my troll dolls and cave houses because she was passed on to me from my mother's childhood. She lay in a little shoebox, with blue eyes that opened and closed, depending on her angle, and wore a red cotton dress and white bloomers.

Time in my room was reserved for after the street lights went on or I was restricted because I had gotten into some kind of trouble. I remember my room with a pink chiffon bedspread and white furniture that was eventually traded for a bright yellow one to go with the mod sixties style yellow, orange and green daisy wallpaper that covered a room divider built when a family room and extra bedroom were added to our home by a guy named Reg Wood. In that room, I played a few 45's--Englebert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, The Jackson Five, Bobby Sherman, the Osmond Brothers and the one real album I owned, The Supremes' Greatest Hits. In my room, I listened to music, wrote in my diary and played with my troll dolls, crafting clothing for them out of felt. I made vests in every color. I'm not sure if they ever had any pants. In that place I had papered my closet doors with shiny fold-out photographs of idols from Tiger Beat magazine and began for the first time in my life to begin to think like a girl, wondering why all of the sudden, my brother's friends were acting strangely toward me when they had been my companions and playmates all my life.

Everything was changing. The boys began to pull pranks, I spent more time with Vivian, my best friend and smoked my first cigarettes. My mother found half-butts in my top dresser drawer. I started wrangling with Mom over what I could and couldn't wear to school. The social and political climate had changed enough that girls were newly allowed to wear pants to school. My mother liked me to be a lady, so I was only allowed to wear them on Fridays. So I dropped them out my window in the morning and picked them up on the way to school until Joyce from across the street told my mother over coffee what I was doing. I also had an agreement with Mom to wear the shoes with the platform heels I had begged her to buy every day if I got them. I learned soon that they were not so comfortable and didn't go with everything, so I would use that handy window to drop more comfortable ones to pick up on my way to school. That was when I learned that I should not disobey my mother or be dishonest because I was bound to get caught.

It is probably also why to this day I try not to do anything wrong because somewhere along the way I will be accountable. The lessons continued as Mike F. snapped my newly acquired bra strap in the front yard. Mom was watching. I had a long dialogue in a series of notes with Rick M. about meeting in the lemon orchard to "M.O." That was fairly transparent code for "making out". We talked a big game, but never even kissed or held hands, eventually breaking up during a passing period between classes. Rusty had given me a yellow St. Christopher necklace, which at the time was a symbol of "going steady". That "relationship" was about as eventful as my written note dialogue with Rick M. That was a time of big talk, rumors of pubescent development or lack thereof and fantasies that Michael Jackson, who was my age, really would "be there to comfort you", or that Donny Osmond was singing directly to me when he sang, "hey there lonely girl, let me make your broken heart like new". I knew they were singing about something important, but had not yet lived enough to actually know the depth of those lyrics in the totality of my life.

Drip, drip come the memories in patches and images, visions, recollections, imaginings and feelings that started me on a road to womanhood that looks back at those times with amusement at my genuine innocence, sadness for my mother's dramatic loss so early in her life, and happiness for my parents' watchful eyes that taught me a goodness I cherish.