“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
The red spawn of Satan is driving me mad. I am Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. I swear the spawn sits and stares at me then blatantly jumps onto the feeder with a swish of its tail. Today I am super- soaker shopping.
Around where I lived when I was a kid, there were woods, the all-season swamp, blueberry bushes and a huge field filled in the summer with grasshoppers by day and fireflies by night. On one exploration we, my brother and I, found a small box-like shack in the side woods. It was made up of odd boards and must have been newly constructed or we’d have seen it before then. When we looked inside, we saw magazines, girly magazines as we used to call them. We left them there and high-tailed it out of the shack. Later, when I was older, I figured the shack probably belonged to some teenage boys who were hiding the magazines, but I never saw anyone there. I never went back inside. I think I was afraid.
Some things stay with you. I remember the sound of the roller skates on the street and the different sound they made on the black top. I also remember how odd my feet felt once I’d stopped roller skating. They sort of tingled on the bottoms. It was different with ice skating. The sides of my feet hurt and walking felt strange. Downhill on a bike was the best feeling of all. It was speed, and I loved it when the wind whipped my hair. I never used the pedals. I let the incline do the work. While walking home from school in the rain, we’d stomp a big puddle over and over and watch the water fly. The puddle would get smaller and smaller until almost no water was left. We got soaked. My shoes were so squishy bubbles broke through at the laces. Once we got inside the house, my mother right away made us take our shoes off.
Every late afternoon we sat and watched television. We sat on the floor close to the set. My mother was always in the kitchen making dinner. My father wouldn’t be home until later. He’d come in the door wearing his topcoat and his fedora. He’d put the fedora on the top shelf of the closet by the door and he’d hang up his topcoat. He always wore a suit underneath.
When I was a kid, my life was filled with constants. They made me feel safe and comfortable.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: bike riding, blueberry bushes, downhill bike ride, field, girly magazines, ice and roller skating, puddles, rain, red spawn of Satan, shack in the woods, Swamp
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April 25, 2014 at 11:58 am
I remember the sound from the gast stove we had in our sumnmer cottage and the smell. I’m pretty sure I could feel the smell of gas outside work a few days ago because as soon as I did I came to think of that stove and chilly summer mornings when we all were waiting for the cocoa to get ready 🙂
I used to love going downhill fast with my bike until I realised that if one hits a tiny rabbit in high speed you really are in trouble and the pain will be rather bad when landing on the ground 🙂 🙂 After that I never went down fast again 🙂 at least not in places where I new wild rabbits lived.
I managed to get a few photos of those cute squirrels today 🙂 But ours are so shy they rareky sit still long enough so I can get any photos at all, they only wants to get some distance between us.
Sunny and warm here today and it actually got too warm when we were out walking and the weak wind couldn’t reach us. I’ll soon get used to the heat though, if it stays that is 🙂
Have a great day!
Christer.
April 25, 2014 at 12:05 pm
Christer,
Smell is the best trigger for memories. Smelling that grass would have zoomed you back to that cottage in a heartbeat.
There were no rabbits where I grew up, at least not on the roads. I could go fast down any hill! At the bottom, though, we had to be careful of cars.
I will send you some of my beasts! They are horrible and eat all my birdseed.
Still a might chilly here.
Enjoy your evening!
April 25, 2014 at 12:54 pm
“we saw magazines, girly magazines”
Me too 🙂
April 25, 2014 at 1:14 pm
My Dear Hedley,
We saw but didn’t look!
April 25, 2014 at 1:24 pm
You were extremely well behaved.
April 25, 2014 at 1:28 pm
MDH,
They were naked women, out of my interest loop.
April 25, 2014 at 1:39 pm
well, if you didn’t look, how do you know that they were naked ladies ?
April 25, 2014 at 1:44 pm
MDH,
My brother looked!
April 25, 2014 at 4:33 pm
Hi Kat,
I had forgotten about shoes so wet that bubbles broke through at the laces. They squished, too.
My best friend in high school had parents who were artists. Her father also worked as a commercial artist in Boston. He took the train every day. He always carried a brief case, wore a top coat and a hat.
One day my friend’s father asked if he could do a bust of me and I said okay. I sat for it for what seemed like forever. It was life-sized and done in some kind of sculpting clay. Eventually he had it cast in plaster and put it on top of the book case in their kitchen. Every evening, when he came home from work, he would put his hat on my head. My friend said that he pretty much did that up until the day he went into hospital for his last illness. She still has my head. 🙂
It was a lovely day up here, sunny and pleasant. I spent most of it at a funeral and the post funeral celebration that our family generally does. It was nice to see cousins that I haven’t seen in a long time. While we were at the grave listening to the priest do the Lord’s Prayer, a red-tailed hawk flew through the group at just a bit above the priest’s head. He didn’t miss a beat. My brothers and I were impressed. He may not have even seen it, though.
Enjoy the evening.
April 25, 2014 at 4:46 pm
Hi Caryn,
They did squish and small bubbles formed.
That’s a neat story your having sat for a sculptor. You are the first person I’ve know who was an artists model. It’s kind of cool that his hat was put on it every day. I wonder why they didn’t give it to you. Maybe it had too much sentimental value.
It was sunny here all day too, but it was still chilly. Like you, I don’t see my cousins except at funerals, but I have never been all that close to them given the age difference. My sister in Wakefield sees them all the time, and two of my cousins go to Colorado and visit my other sister.
The hawk sounds like symbol.
Have a great evening!
April 25, 2014 at 6:08 pm
Girly magazines – what a find 🙂
Recently I looked at the english wikivoyage.org websites and found a funny warning “Germans are not prude, so be prepared if you watch German TV”. I had to laugh out loud. It never came into my mind that our tame TV is worth a warning. I haven’t seen much US TV so I can’t compare.
Have fun with the super-soaker. I’ve used a similar water gun to spray off plant lice from my old rose bush. Much easier, plant lice don’t run around.
April 25, 2014 at 7:01 pm
Birgit,
Even my brother wasn’t all that happy-he was too young
Regular stations tend to be tame here while cable pulls out all the stops. I have heard every 4 letter word and seen lots of frontal nudity, male and female. People do complain but they always hear it’s cable, turn to another channel.
I have to find one yet-it is still early in the season.
April 25, 2014 at 10:06 pm
Curiosity of the opposite sex is very normal especially among prepubescent boys. When I was 10 my father collected Playboy magazines which according to him he bought for the articles. I sneaked peeks at the centerfold pictures for a different purpose. When I got older I started reading the articles as well as looking at the centerfold. I was young and male before the Internet. 😉
April 25, 2014 at 10:13 pm
Bob,
It was true that the articles were excellent in Playboy. Authors who published in no other magazines, wrote only novels, wrote stories for Playboy. There was more to it than the centerfold.