What Happened (Part 3)

That memory, as I said, rises like an island out of the mist.  When that mist at last clears and real connected memory begins, a third member has joined the party, in some mysterious manner that makes it seem like he had always been there.  This is John, John Wade Babel, and he completes a strangely cemented triad that no matter how much the family expands is always a particularly strong unit within the group.  To compare an infinitely greater Trinity to our little one, Mike was The Father (sort or remote, full of plans, infallible), John was The Son (loving, social, humble), and I was The Holy Spirit (somewhat shadowy, an intermediary, and said to resemble a pigeon).

     Thinking about those very earliest years of my life, one concept that is hard to keep in my head is just how small I once was.  As you grow up the world around you and your idea of it adjusts itself in your head, and people who have only known me in adult life as a tall, lumbering, bulky beast might find it hard to imagine that I was once small and speedy.  I remember standing up under the kitchen table; kneeling in front of a window and resting my chin on the sill; squeezing into the space between the refrigerator and kitchen sink; hiding in the gap behind the headboard of Mom and Pop’s bed or in the pantry or in the little cubby in the bathroom for towels during epic games of Hide and Seek.  One of our entertainments as children was riding on Pop’s shoulders and daring to reach up to touch the ceiling. Every now and then I experience a very vivid “body” memory, of sitting on the kitchen floor when I was small and imagining the space into the dining room and around the corner into the living room and towards the hall; it is almost as if I were astral projecting.  In my thoughts the rooms are vast, church-like chambers, and as I live this memory I know again how very big the world was to me; even the little chunk that was cordoned off as my own.  In that world, even a couch could be a kingdom with a suzerainty all its own.

Like our wagon-wheel furniture in the living room.