A short memoir for my creative writing class.
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Summer might be the favorite season of every school-age kid, or at least I think it should be. It always seemed brighter than any other time of year, and its beauty colors my childhood memories. The mountains dance, adorned in their best dress of brilliant green, underneath a cloudless sky bluer than a jay bird’s wing. All the anticipation of spring consummated in the splendor of the land. The wildflowers in my backyard, at the edge of the woods, sway in the sultry, sluggish August breeze, their blooms a kaleidoscope seemingly unaffected by the oppressive heat of what my grandparents term the dog days. With no school and a million adventures to experience or imagine, the dog days didn’t hinder a young kid much either, even though I’ll admit it was always a welcome pleasure to crowd around the humming window unit in Pap’s bedroom (the only room in our house with air conditioning for years) or lay on the old plaid couch in our cool, musty basement for a few hours on a lazy day.
The first summers I can remember meant catching worms and being rowdy with my cousin Trey, jumping on a blazing trampoline for hours at a time, eating bowls of
glistening, fresh-picked grapes on Grandma Chub’s back porch. I spent a lot of time in summer at that woman’s house, and she remains a legendary figure in my memory. A strong woman, widowed by her second husband, she held our family together for a long time, helping raise her great-grandbabies (that’s where I came in) and making sure everybody stayed in church and kept on having reunions. I still remember her ruby nail polish, her perfectly coiffed hair the color of steel wool, the way she couldn’t keep from walking around while she brushed her teeth, how her hands looked, strong and worn, so often caked with flour as she rolled out the best biscuits you’ve ever tasted. She was beautiful, full of that firm, motherly sort of grace that time and hard experience and lots of children lend a woman, and it was most often in her presence that our family and all its friends came together.
The slow, hot days and general lull in activity that belong to summers made them a particularly suitable time for entertaining visitors - “having company,” my family calls it. Distant relatives, old friends, gospel singing buddies, you name it and they’ve probably stopped by. The adults in my family took great joy in this, seemingly unaware of the limitless exploits waiting just a few steps away in the sunny backyard. They could sit endlessly in Grandma Chub’s ever welcoming living room, talking, joking, telling stories the way only older people can.
A child’s role in all this, however, is very different, more a conversation piece than a participant. Large strangers you swear you’ve never met hug you and pat you on the head, commenting on how much you’ve grown or how beautiful or pleasant you are while you do your nervous best to fake remembering them for the sake of politeness.
Then someone tells a story about your latest honorable deed or the good grade you made in school or the rascally thing you did when you were sure no one was looking. The living room chuckles while you blush, and then the show’s over. The adults return to grown-up things, and you slink away since it’s likely in your best interests to be unseen and well-behaved. It was during those slinking away times, with all the adults busied in that ancient art of talk, that we had our fun. All supervising eyes turned elsewhere, we roamed, unbridled, over the entire premises, the plain red brick house and its neatly groomed backyard now a wide-open range of possibility.
I stood barefoot on Grandma Chub’s bright red second floor deck, looking out on her backyard in midday as Nebuchadnezzar must have gazed on Babylon in all its grandeur, the crown of my five-year-old head just level with the porch railing. The fresh-cut grass wore that emerald radiance characteristic of the season and the grape vine curled around the clothes line below, hanging sumptuously in the bright sun. A perfect day, the adults all busy inside with visitors, I was looking for something to do when Trey came gamboling up to my side.
(I should take the time to mention here that, at this stage of life, my cousin Trey and I were best friends. With only nine months’ distance between us in age, we were inseparable, both in good and mischief.)
Trey had reached that stage of life when one has flying on the brain. All he wanted to do was jump off something and soar into the clouds. He expressed this desire to his father often, but no one took the idea into serious consideration. To a young, invincible boy, however, a perfect summer day (when maybe you really could do
anything) with no adults in sight and a porch the perfect height for takeoff made a marriage of ideal conditions beyond his power to resist.
He looks at me, kind of sideways, a little hesitant, knowing he’s about to venture into forbidden territory.
“Do you wanna jump?”
Neither of us grasped the potential weight of this decision - the possible broken limbs, the trip to the emergency room, the damage that might have been done to our tiny bodies. I wasn’t scared to jump; I’ve just always been a little passive, not very good at leading.
“You go first.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Go. I’ll come after you.”
I watched as he stood on the railing, poised and motionless, ready to take flight. As he fell forward, time slowed down like it does in most good action movies and a lot of special moments in life. His little body spiraling and flipping in the air, my cousin tumbled downward until the clothes line below intercepted him. His fall paused a moment, suspended in the tension of the line. Then, with sudden momentum, the line twisted and flung him to the earth. I stood and stared aghast at his form, spread-eagled and motionless on the emerald grass.
I burst into tears and sprinted through the house. Our secret exploits were about to be exposed, our future liberties jeopardized. My panicked entrance into the living room full of adults must have upset its pleasant serenity considerably.
“I killed Trey! He’s out in the yard, and he’s dead!”
Ten minutes later, I sat by his side on the cool smooth hardwood floor of Grandma Chub’s living room as he continued to hold that same spread-eagle pose, belly up, eyes closed, breathing slowly. I waited somberly, silently - as though by the bedside of a dying man - for him to either get up and play again or give up the ghost. As I waited, sorrow penetrated my repentant little heart as if I myself were responsible for the fall of man or killing all the dinosaurs.
Repentant or not, I experienced a lot of grace. Far from being angry, the adults were simply glad we were alive. (Their wrath had been my second greatest concern next to losing a cousin and best friend to an untimely end.) As for Trey, after about twenty more minutes, he did indeed start moving again, confirming the notion of many mothers that little boys are elastic and can simply bounce back from anything, and we were back to play within the hour, no hard feelings and no questions asked in that special way that only little children and saints can seem to manage.
The appeal of weightlessly rushing through thin air, untethered and untamable, had captivated my cousin’s mind that day. Most five-year-olds experience this, I think, but maybe this isn’t just a phase. Maybe this is something that shows up when we’re five and never quite goes away. We want to soar through the sky, to be superman or Tarzan, to have some great adventure, to do something besides go to plain old kindergarten or sit through Mrs. Kearn’s algebra class or toil away inside a cubicle. Wondering whether your leap off the jungle gym will end with your soaring into the
clouds; a late-night joy ride in your parents’ car; daydreaming, staring out your office window, we all want freedom, and we want it all our lives. Our souls yearn for takeoff.
