Mya Writes Things
Writing Tips, Advice, Blog, Musings, and More
[On Childhood]
“Mine is a fogged-out landscape from which occasional memories appear like isolated trees...the kind that look as if they might like to grab and eat you.” –Stephen King, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” page 17 My memories of childhood are all lined neatly up by year, age, home address, like a long line of books neatly stacked on a bookshelf in alphabetical order. I remember my childhood in vivid, and sometimes excruciating, detail. I remember walking down the grassy hill at the graveside service for a great grandmother, and the smell of dampness in the greenery. I remember stepping in the mud in a pair of black buckle shoes I still own to this day. I’m thirty years old physically with the exhaustion of a cancer survivor that puts me somewhere in my seventies. But I still fit in those shoes, being a small human whose feet haven’t grown since eighth grade. Speaking of eighth grade, I remember crying tears of exhaustion and despair over a Saxon algebra textbook, listening to the Jurassic Park soundtrack by John Williams on repeat because it was the only music keeping me from ripping my hair out and having a complete mental breakdown because of how much I hated the subject of math. I still find myself relaxed by the Jurassic Park soundtrack, but I still have a foul coppery taste in the back of my throat when I think of math. Speaking of numbers, I remember our first multiplication lesson, a poster showing all the “times tables” as we called it, tacked to the wall of our “homeschool” space. I remember learning the alphabet, singing the phonetic song with the oddly racist “I-I-I-Indian!” part for learning the letter I. I remember a very specific white cassette tape with pink letters on the side that contained a bunch of nineties Christian rock hits, like Amy Grant and U2 and even a band that my Dad was a drummer for. I remember his drumming for hours and hours in the soundproofed sunken garage with exactly three steps down to an olive carpet a la 1970s and wood paneled walls. I remember the chill of the cement floor outside the back door, where there was a small landing and a second stairwell that went down into the fully furnished basement apartment. I remember the yard. That yard was never just a yard. It was Kansas. It was Narnia. It was the jungle on an island with the Swiss Family Robinson. On the immediate right, there was a gate to the driveway. A small shed where Dad kept the mower. A huge, towering tree that dropped massive green-bean shaped pods every year, followed by massive yellow leaves. There was a white rose bush that climbed up the tree trunk. There was a bird fountain along the fence, a small stone one. The yard was huge, so the open space in the middle was wide enough for running, but there was a very specific area where we put the pool every summer. In the upper right hand corner, there was a small grove of trees. This was the most magical place. This was where there were birch trees, white trunks with black freckles, and shimmery tiny leaves that exposed silver underbellies every time there was a breeze. There wasn’t grass in this grove for some reason, so it was an excellent place to make mudpies. Two of the stronger trees that formed the left border of the grove used to bear a hammock, until a friend broke the hammock. This grove was where there was a tiny mound where one of our renters in the basement had a little burial ground for her pet rabbit. I always wondered if anyone did any “work” later in the yard and would find the bones. I hoped not. I hoped the rabbit would continue to rest in peace forever, in the bare corner that would often become carpeted with dying pine needles for a nice orange rug. Now, that’s the upper right corner. Turn a bit and follow the back of the fence. There is an open space that looks out into the parking lot of the parole offices. One time, a woman leaned over the fence to talk to us and tried to convince us that she had toys and candy that belonged to us in her car. It was terrifying. We knew about stranger danger. And she was definitely dangerous. I wonder what happened to her. I wonder if she ever took someone else’s kids when she couldn’t get us. The bare space was not a pleasant place. We ignored the opening between the trees along the back fence that looked into the dreaded parole offices. It was the Mysterious Beyond like in “The Land Before Time”. It was the Elephant Graveyard from “The Lion King”. It was the bad place where bad people would go. Moving on. The upper left corner. Mom’s garden. I remember cornstalks one year. The best part was a thicket of raspberry bushes, but not just any raspberries. Orange raspberries. They taste better than regular raspberries. And we could go out and eat them right off the bush, no washing required, because we didn’t spray any dangerous chemicals. And when you stepped into the thicket, it was kind of in a semi-circle all around you. A tiny, fruitful haven. Moving on, turning the corner now (you can’t really reach the corner, the garden was a little too thick) but there, on the left fence now, there’s a redwood tree. A massive fucking redwood tree. Unusual for a Portland suburbia home. It towered over every tree in the neighborhood, you could always see it from far down the street. It had a thick trunk, a huge bed of long green needles beneath, and a tiny fallen log behind it that acted as a bench. My sister and one of the renter’s children, John, would go sit on the log and have long conversations. His little brother, Austen, and I, would creep up and eavesdrop and giggle and pelt them with pinecones. I reconnected with Austen about two decades later and asked him if he thought we were going to get married back in the day, or if I was just crazy. He assured me: oh, no, absolutely, he thought we were going to get married too. That’s how kids are. They just connect with someone, and there is no one else around, so, I guess that’s the one I’m gonna marry. It feels inevitable. We were hopelessly in love with each other by default. I’m pleased to know now that it wasn’t one-sided. Validation feels good. Then, there were some tall rose bushes and rhododendrons, and the gate separating the back yard from the side yard at the front of the house. Tall bushes on the other side, too, which was a very pleasant space to walk in. I used to wish the gate was a little further ahead and the fence was a little longer so that we’d have that green tunnel to walk through. But it’s okay. We made our own tunnels. Blanket forts in the bunk beds. Pillow forts in the living room. Imaginary forts in the grove. Back in the day when we built walls made out of imagination and soft things, because we didn’t have any in real life. Around our hearts or otherwise. Do I see my childhood with rose-colored glasses? Maybe. I was happy. Sometimes there’s child-grabbing trees like Mr. King sees, rearing up out of the monotone curtains of gray fogbanks. Like the mud at the funeral, or the blue & silver book cover design of the algebra textbook. For every singular tree with grabby hands, there’s a grove somewhere behind it bathed in golden light with an orange rug and a grave for a rabbit. I remember the smell there when it rained. I remember the smell of the finger paints we stored in the tiny “craft closet” in our tiny hallway. I remember the hot summer nights when we opened the front door, kept the screen locked, and let in a breeze while the Lifescapes album “Guitar/Cello” played “The Road to Harper’s Spring”. The massive living room window was an open view to a denim-blue skyline with no interruptions except for a few treetops and power lines above the silhouettes of our neighbor’s homes. Ralf, the guy with the cool Christmas decorations. Justin and Stephanie, brother and sister. Justin would play basketball with his friends, Stephanie would babysit us. There was a boy that we saw walking to school every day and I think his name was Cowie. There was a neighbor who had a wolf, a real wolf. Sometimes we could hear it howling. There was a neighbor who was a policeman and he showed us his motorcycle. There was old couples that were like tiny adopted grandparents. They are probably no longer with us. There was a young couple newer to the neighborhood, and I think his name was Bruce, her name might have been Diane, Nancy, or something. They had a black lab named Sadie. All of these memories are from before I turned ten years old in the year 2000, since we moved out of that house with the grove and the berries in 1999. I remember trying to hide my crying in the car as we drove away for the last time. Because I thought that house was made of magic and I wouldn’t have it any more. Here’s a surprise, I sort of end up feeling that way wherever I live, and each time I leave it’s hard. But I’ve come to learn that the magic comes with me, as do memories. Memories do not belong in the mudpies, the olive green carpets that follow us wherever we go, the corners with dust bunnies and the groves with dead ones. The memories don’t stay behind. They’re mine. I take them with me.
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