in that house...

the LAST assignment from Day 2 (of 25) of my class!! find a picture of yourself, and write a story about the person you see in the photo... i suppose i could have created a fictional account centering on one of these details, but i love the truth of these little scattered memories i could recall from age 4-8, when we lived on Bakeman Lane. 

(there are, of course, many more, but i want to save some to tell you about when we get to know each other... or when i write my memoirs ;)

in that house...

My dad taught me trigonometry at age five, describing imaginary triangular planes stretching from me to him to the mantel above the fireplace. Sitting on his lap in the orange comfy chair from the 70s, I saw it.

My mom dressed up like a clown for my birthday, and we got to dance to music and jump high to pop balloons, filled each with a candy or little note, strung across the living room. She let me make up my own recipes, and try baking them (sometimes she'd help adjust my 3 cups of salt, or 100 degree ovens, but she let me make strawberry cake that was no such thing!)

My three sisters and I shared one of the two bedrooms. I had my very own desk, painted sky blue, turtle green, and baby pink. It held my treasures and was my own little world when I opened it to write songs or thank you notes on my rainbow hot-air balloon notepad.

We could play outside, swinging from the tree, collecting snails and seedpods for a penny apiece. But we couldn’t go past the telephone pole in front of Stuart’s house. We could smell the old lady’s many-colored roses but not touch them. There were dozens of bees on the tiny pink flowers on our bush in the front, a porcelain deer resting below.

My parents had a walk-in closet where Mom would spend some alone time with God each morning, and we knew we weren’t to interrupt. We also watched old home movies in there – using a reel and projector, lying on the floor all in each others' laps. And we drew pictures with neon crayons and took them in there to watch them glow in the blacklight.

We camped in the backyard with a tent made of sheets strung house to fence, and slept in cozy sleeping bags, and ate dry cereal when we woke up in the dewy morning hours.

It seems to me that it was a different person that lived those memories. When life was simpler, before I turned eight and we moved. Not that it got a whole lot more complicated quickly, but I lived in that next house through the rougher years, too; so the “me” I imagine there is older, more emotional, than the young me with pigtails I see in the house on Bakeman Lane.





woohoooo! on to painting!!!