It's my birthday today. I'm really just a kid in a 60-year-old birthday suit.
“Mama! Mama! I want to be up there. I want to do my ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Wuz a Bear.' I want to stand on that bench and sing into the microphone.” Mama brought the sheet music. The pianist can play it when Joyce finishes.
Joyce is our neighbor. She's fifteen years old. She sings sweetly. I'll never be a soprano like her. No one minds that her head is bandaged. She was in a bad car accident. But she'll be all right.
We're at the Crescent Park talent show. Mama and Dad and I live by the entrance to the park in Portland Oregon. It was 1945. WWII was almost over. I am four years old.
“Oh yes! Oh yes! I want to be one of those one of those flowers.” Mama calls them “Highly Derangahs”. They're growing all around Mrs. Howell's house. They're holding it up so it won't tip over. I'll run right into one of those Highly Derangahs. “I'm a flower now. I'm a flower.” I thrust my arms out to the side. Buds spring from each finger. They're fragrant and fluffy like lolli-pop colored clouds from the sky.
Mrs. Howell opened her front door. She is wearing those old lady shoes my St. Louis Grandma wears. They have thick high heels – black – and lace all up with breathing holes on the tippy-toes. Mrs. Howell is nice but she isn't a person. She's what is called a baby sitter. “ Yes” she will baby sit tomorrow.
Walking towards home, Mama and I come to the fountain on the edge of the park. Maybe I'll grow up to be one of those rainbows spurting up to the sun and back down again. There are oodles of droplets making raindrop sounds. People have scattered pennies in the fountain bed. They winkety-wink as we walk on.
Mrs. Huckin our neighbor from across the street waves. She'd like to know if I want to see the puppies. Her bulldog, Weaver, just gave birth. Four little black and white wigglies are sucking, pulling and re-adjusting to Weaver's belly. Weaver is lying there with her eyes closed being patient. I could never be that patient. Mama thanks Mrs. Huckin real humble-like. As if it were a big effort for Mrs. Huckin to show us the pups. Sometimes, I don't understand Mama at all.
It's naptime. I've discovered something. If I take the eyeglass case I found on the living-room table and rub it on the treasure place between my legs, it makes naptime so much better. Something tells me I gotta keep it secret and do the rubbing underneath my blanket. Mama never would get mad; she gets tense.
I must have gone to sleep. Mama is standing here. She has brought me a green olive as a treat. She's putting on my white dress. “Dotty-Swiss” she calls the material. It has butterflies embroidered on the front. I feel special. I can twirl to the music on the radio while dinner is being fixed.
I'm having dinner before Mama and Dad tonight. It's going to be plain ground meat, mashed potatoes, peas and applesauce. Sometimes Dad asks me to go out to our vegetable garden and pull extra carrots and onions. The onions come out real easy. They are clean white with pale green stripes from the darkness of the earth. I feel important when I pull those vegetables. Mama never asks me. She always does it herself.
I'm right in the middle of sticking peas to the applesauce when Aunty Blossom pays a surprise visit. She's brought her dog Sugar. Aunty wants to know if I can walk with them. Oh yes! Oh yes! But Mama says I have to finish dinner. I'll finish it all right. I get up from the table and finish it right into the garbage can. There's not much Mama can say to that.
We are walking along the edge of Crescent Park. Aunty Blossom gives me Sugar's leash to hold. I feel taller holding that leash. I notice Aunty's hands. They are workman's hands. They have traces of dirt under the nails and in the cracks of her fingers. She is a nurse in a doctor's office. When she's not in the office she does a lot of growing things. When she's not doing that she looms, knits, crochets, and braids rugs and sews. She's always doing something important with those hands. She wears a heavy gold band with three big diamonds in it on her marriage finger. I've never seen anything like it. She's what is called an individual.
Aunty Blossom's mother is only sixteen years older than herself. Grandma Beehman stands at the door to welcome Mama and I whenever we come to visit. She makes sure we pass by the snakes all right. They have a big rockery holding up their house. Lots of Garter Snakes live there.
Those Garters get to talking and gather in mounds to sun themselves. One of the mounds fell onto the sidewalk just as Mama and I were passing by. The Garters, (there must have been twenty of them), squiggle and squaggle every which way. I'd never want to be a Garter. I'd have to get along with too many brothers and sisters. I'd have to pile up and make loop d' loops. I couldn't take all that closeness. Besides they're kind of ugly. Well anyway, that's what we have to endure to get to Aunty Blossom's house. But it's worth it.
Inside the house we visit in the sitting room. There's a loom sitting by the floor to ceiling bay window, which looks out over her back yard. She weaves her place mats and material for sewing on that loom. You can see flowers dancing everywhere in the garden, lots of trees and even a chicken or two. Aunty says that the chicken runs around the garden a couple of times after she chops its head off for dinner. I'm glad I'm not a chicken, I know that.
Mama and I like to sit on the wooden benches by the fireplace. “For Wishering Lovers and Aging Hearts Made” is carved in the wooden mantelpiece. Old pewter dishes are everywhere decorating up the room.
We have lunch at the round table and pass the food with the lazy Susan that sits on top. It's here I learned about cottage cheese with jam; figs from Aunty's garden swimming in heavy crème; fresh butter squash with crumbled bacon; and hot homemade Apple Brown Betty.
Once in awhile Mama and Aunty Blossom go to a relaxation center. They have tables, which are divided, into three sections. Each section vibrates at different speeds. Mama and Aunty lay on the tables and I stand around. I'd let them use the eyeglass case but something tells me they would prefer tables. I watch them shake around a little and feel happy for them when say they're feeling better and less tense.
I must have been drifting off in thought while walking. Sugar, the dog, smells everything he comes across. I ask Aunty why he sniffs so much. She says it's so he can find the bathroom. He wants to pick one out that's especially his. Seems a real shame he can't read. Mama and I know where the bathroom is by Mama looking at the signs. It's much less complicated. Mama and Dad tell me that pretty soon I'll be able to read too.
That night I can see from my bedroom window by the light of the full moon the silhouette of a Mama cat carrying her kittens. One by one she is carrying them by the nape of the neck to someplace across the street. Dad cut down all the raspberry bushes this past weekend. That's where they must have been living. He cut down those bushes because of the fire in the schoolhouse. Mama called me to the kitchen window to watch. Flames poured out of each window of the building. Black smoke was filling the sky. Children marched two by two out of the park. No one was hurt. I saw first hand how powerful and quick and eerily beautiful destruction could be.
Tomorrow brings many things: Mrs. Howell for one. She walks beside me while I ride my tricycle up the hill in the park towards the swings. We look down at all the bushes and the trees. A big bumblebee lands on the handlebars of my tricycle. I'm scared of bees. I get welts from bee stings. I scream and scream. Mrs. Howell doesn't know what to do. She stands there in kindly indecision. The bee flies away.
I don't know why I have baby-sitters. I still have to take care of myself. I calm Mrs. Howell down and we go home. She lets me have a Kool-Aid Popsicle Mama makes and keeps in the ice tray. There's a toothpick stuck in its center where I can hold on. They are juicy and cooling and much better than the Popsicles from the store.
Those tomorrows keep coming until I notice something. I notice that I'm becoming 60 years old. I didn't become a singer, or a rainbow, or an onion, or a dog or a bee. I became 60. I don't know what that is really. It has something to do with groups of 10 - 6 groups to be exact. You know 10……….
One, Two button my shoe,
Three, Four shut the door,
Five, Six pick up sticks,
Seven, Eight lay them straight,
Nine, Ten go back again,
Go back again,
Go back,
Go.