Posted tagged ‘field’

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“It is a happy talent to know how to play.”

April 28, 2016

Though it is still chilly, I think spring has started to take hold. When I went to get the papers, I stayed outside a while to listen to the birds. Their songs filled the air from everywhere.

Gracie has been outside most of the morning. She lies in the sun on the deck until her fur is hot to the touch, and she has started panting from the heat. She comes inside, waits for a small treat then goes into her crate for a bit of a nap. She and I are going to the dump later.

Yesterday was a busy day for me mostly picking up Coke cans. I was in the cellar looking for a wooden box when I knocked the bags of cans over. The open bag fell and cans went everywhere. I picked them up and put them back into the bag only to have them fall one more time. I didn’t complain because in picking up the cans I found an old wooden box once used for storing cranberries. It was exactly what I was looking for. It is now in the kitchen and already filled.

My daytimes are people-less and quiet. Dogs, including Gracie, bark and they and the birds make the only sounds. I do hear cars going down the other street but not so many during working hours. Winter is the quietest season but this, now, the in-between season, is almost as quiet, but all that will change too enough. In summer the noise will seem endless, but now it is only in the afternoons when the kids get home from school. On good days like today, they play in the street, and they are not quiet. They don’t speak in normal tones. Everything has to be yelled from one kid to another. I don’t know if yesterday was bike or scooter day. I just know it was loud.

When I was growing up, my neighborhood was filled with kids. The younger ones stayed around the backyards under the watchful eyes of mothers looking out kitchen windows. We older kids roamed sometimes on our bikes and sometimes on foot. We made forts in the woods and sustained ourselves with blueberries picked from the bushes on the sunny side of the path in those woods.

The path was brown grass in-between two parts of the woods. At one end of the path was the water tower. The other end was the field below my house. That’s where we used to catch grasshoppers and fireflies and where we’d play tag or red rover. I can still see in my mind’s eye the grasshoppers jumping up in front of us as we ran through the field. I remember the sounds they made.

I think I grew up in the best of all places at the best of all times.

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“There’s something about the sound of a train that’s very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.”

April 25, 2015

The house was cold this morning. I really didn’t want to get out of bed and neither did Gracie. She stood up, shook, then settled back down beside me, leaning against me. She’s into warmth. It was late, 9:20, so I dragged myself downstairs to begin the day.

My mother never woke us up on the weekends or in the summer. The older we got, the longer we slept in, but when we were young, we wanted the whole day. On summer Saturdays we’d get dressed, bolt down our cereals then take off, sometimes on our bikes and sometimes on foot. We’d cut through the woods to get to the horses in the field on Green Street. The house on the property was red, large and old. It was one of those square houses I found out much later were called federal. We’d stand by the fence, and the horses would come over and we’d pat them. My brother and I would try to feed them grass but they weren’t interested. A couple of times we climbed the fence hoping to jump on the horses and ride them. They’d take off as soon as we got close which was a good thing. I’m sure riding bareback would have lasted about a minute or two before I hit the ground.

Once in a while we’d alter our walking route and head for a different side of town, the area where the box factory, the railroad station and the red store were. Back then my town had a lot of factories for a small town: the Jones Shoe factory up town and two other factories which make chemicals, both by the railroad tracks. Those two buildings were brick, not common for buildings where I lived. Across the front of one was a black sign, but I don’t remember the name of the company though I passed it more times than I can remember because that part of the tracks was a shortcut home. All the factories were still active when I was a kid. One of my friend’s mothers worked in the shoe factory, and I remember watching the trains crossing the main road on their way to the chemical factories.

I used to love walking those tracks, none of which remain. Even now I always stop and watch trains. There is something about them which grabs my imagination.

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“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

April 25, 2014

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.

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