“Children learn more from what you are, than what you teach.” –W.E.B. Du Bois
The Night of Delirium
A high fever told me I needed to rearrange the drawers in my dresser because the outside colors were wrong. My dresser was ordinary beige. Then, I needed to bring the dresser to school. The fever also decided I had to take the number one million and make it tangible before second-period math the next day. My darkened room gave me no answers; I went downstairs to ask my dad what to do.
I churned my arms as I spoke. One, two, three. Seventy six, seventy seven…lost my place, start over…My mother’s footsteps magnified the rhythm of my count.
“The aspirin. It should be in this cabinet,” she said. “No, this closet. Found it.”
“What is it?” I asked. Enough times to prove planet Earth and I had little in common.
“Aspirin. You are burning up. Listen to me for once.”
“I have to take the numbers one to a million and bring them to school tomorrow,” I repeated. My behavior set Mom into a panic.
Dad saved the moment and spoke to my delirium. “I’m good at math and at fixing things. Tell you what. I will take care of your dresser and put that million together for you. All you need to do is take the aspirin.”
I descended from planet-dangerously-high-temperature madness long enough to swallow the tablets. Then my father carried me to bed. Strangely, I remembered the insanity of the night the next morning. My fever had gone down enough for me to enter the real world again. Even if school wasn’t a possibility until after a round of antibiotics.
The year was 1963. I was a junior in high school. I could never thank my dad enough for that moment. I still do.
Meet your child where they are. That’s what I learned. It may take some guts and imagination.
Thanks again, Dad. I’m waving upstairs. Beyond the ceiling and roof. “If you didn’t make it to the top of the clouds, no one else has a chance.”
When we are children we welcome thinking of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind. Patrick Rothfuss
Nope, No Wedding Yet
The rocky ground at the bottom of the street of my grade school home became my mini-mountain, perfect for climbing. It was hidden behind enough trees to be its own paradise, a place for a kid to climb and become king of the world. When I was nine years old I saw nothing peculiar about a strawberry-blond girl king.
The great play arena eventually disappeared as developers plowed through. But in the mid 1950’s Joe and I claimed the world. He was my self-proclaimed boyfriend. In fourth grade I hadn’t graduated from paper dolls and mud pies, so the notion of a white veil followed by a life in the kitchen sounded as appealing as living with a perpetual mop. I was allergic to homework, much less life responsibilities. Imagination was more appealing.
Joe wasn’t like the other guys in my class. We played as equals. I knew his family wasn’t tidy. I didn’t care. Joe didn’t need the meaner boys around him to be okay. He wasn’t the tallest and certainly not the most popular kid. Mom had never met him. That alone was good enough for me. Outside, Joe and I could always be free. From homework or chores. From real life. We challenged an open space where the air moved freely around our imaginations. And the blue sky was on our side.
“Hey,” he said one day. I saw a kind of shy smile in his brown eyes that didn’t match the same dirty blue jeans he wore all the time, and he planted a kiss right smack on my lips.
I thought, oh yuck, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Joe wore a kindness that transcended grime. You had to face foreign lands on a fun rock to see past the classroom to understand Joe. We never talked about school stuff. Only the next jaunt into places we created.
“I’ve got a special surprise for you since your birthday is coming up,” he said. “Come to my house.”
We cut through two yards and landed on his street in something like three eyeblinks.
“Hey, Mom!” he called. “Where’s the engagement ring I found? I am going to give it to Mary Therese.”
Mary Therese! My at-school name. I groaned. Oh no. Formal talk. Sounded like a nun. Not me. I’d never hit anyone with a ruler in my life. And I would be off balance with a rosary that big at my waist. A wedding would spoil that lifestyle but neither wife nor sisterhood sounded appealing. And call me Terry, my at-home name.
How could I say something about how I thought girls had to at least have boobs before marriage without sounding personal? Joe’s mom wasn’t mine. The question would need to wait.
“Oh Joe, I’m sorry,” his mother said, not sounding sorry at all. “That ring got accidentally flushed down the toilet.”
Joe groaned. Now that I didn’t need to worry about a commitment, gratitude filled every cell of my tiny being. Who needs a ten-year engagement? Or worse, a lost recess for a wedding ceremony? Yet somehow Joe quickly recovered.
Our relationship ended long before puberty. As time passed, I hoped Joe found someone. Later. Much later. Long after the septic system absorbed my first engagement ring. I always wondered whether it had been born in a box of Cracker Jacks or found on a west-side sidewalk.
At least now if someone asks if I ever broke someone’s heart I can say, “No. The ordinary toilet took care of that for me.”
(simple, childlike bicycle drawing)
Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance, whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice. (David Elkind)One 1950’s variety blue,
second-hand bicycle, no features
peddle-power only.
Balance, I’d mastered it.
A classmate begged to ride.
She sped down the hill,
made a squealing brake,
and met the concrete with her nose.
“It’s the bike’s fault,” she claimed.
Tears fell into the blood on her face
while she stared me down.
My parents said nothing.
Alone, I stepped into new shades of balance.
My peer seemed to choose a
shift-the-blame ploy. As a reticent child,
inaction was my norm. I hadn’t yet learned
when to be silent, when to speak.
I was mute out of fear. Balance
and courage took me years to develop.
To move from fragile ego into integrity.
A new goal reaches into my horizon, to focus
less on blame than on pain. How can I help you?
To be aware of both ploy and hurt. Neither
accepting nor giving censure. Not easy.
Balance includes more than gravity. To
maintain real-life love without being a jerk,
without giving more than I have.
One old lady moving forward, into peace.
Back in the days when I thought childhood and eternity were synonyms, a neighbor kid and I poured vanilla into a teaspoon and tasted it. The flavor was nothing like the ice cream or cake that shared the label. The other girl and I giggled about it. And made faces exaggerating the bitterness.
Again? Yes. We did it again. My mother obviously wasn’t in the room. The taste didn’t improve. Neither did my judgment for years. In a lot of areas. Strange, Mom never did ask why she needed more vanilla so soon. Perhaps we didn’t take as much as my taste buds recall.
That old memory appears as I put a fresh bottle of vanilla in my cabinet. As my mind travels into other realities. Two funerals. One next week. Another not yet planned. The second death occurred today. A member of my church community. It doesn’t seem real. And yet, my head knows differently. I hear her voice in my head. I want to answer back.
Darkness. Light. Bitterness and sweet. This moment. Capture it now.
The holes in lace become the design. The bee, part stinger and part honey maker. A full moon against a black sky.
Childhood and forever. No longer the same.
Balance. May it find its place in more than flavors.
terrypetersen 