What Happened (Part 6)

 

Now in those days all of us boys slept together on one queen-sized bed in the back bedroom, while Mom and Pop had the master bedroom up front.  Not much later on we switched rooms, as it was quieter for Pop to sleep in the back in the daytime between his driving runs.  But at the time we were in the back bedroom, and that’s where we had our dressers and bed and all the serious business of our life; in the room next door, the “guest room,” were kept all our toys and books and spare furniture like the old crib that we had all used and that was called "Lambie” because of the picture on the back.

So one night Pop was out on the road and Mom came in to sleep with us.  I don’t think it was because we were particularly scared, or Mom particularly lonely; it was just good company for us all.  As usual there was jockeying for position and “covers” as we called the various sheets, blankets, and bedspreads. Mom of course got the middle of the bed.  That night I drew the dreaded “edge,” feared because of the possibility of the Hoofer under the bed reaching up and snatching you away. I also had the “raggedy” blanket, a thin patchwork cover that Omi had made and given to the family.  There were probably songs, talk, and stories (Mom loved to tell us stories) before we all settled down to sleep. It was another superstition to not be the last one awake; often you were kept awake longer than the others by that very fear. But one by one we dropped off.  And sometime in the night I woke up, and had to go.

Now, this happened sometime after my solo voyage to the kitchen. It would be hard to say how much time; when you’re little a week can be an eternity, and a year unimaginable. Enough time to have absorbed a few monster movies, perhaps, and to be worried about stories like: “There was a the man who took kids who would not take their naps away to the dump in a burlap bag, there to barbecue his naughty prize on a pile of burning trash.”  This tale was conflated with an actual Peeping Tom who plagued our neighborhood for a while and added to our anxiety.  The upshot was that I was even less sure of my courage than I had been when I was younger.

What was I to do? I couldn’t reach over to Mom in the middle.  Mike had already expressed anger before (in no uncertain terms) when asked to escort me.  Little brothers seemed then to be of little help, and shameful to use.  I hit upon the only plan that offered any hope: camouflage and invisibility.  Covering myself completely with the raggedy blanket, I slipped off the mattress, oozed down to the floor, and began to creep past the foot of the bed, heading for the bedroom door and the hall beyond.

Progress was slow and cautious, because for the plan to work, of course my body had to be totally covered, head and all.  I felt my way along as quietly as I could and used memory and touch to tell me where I was.  I kept my shoulder brushing the bed on my left; when it ended I turned right until I bumped into the doorframe.  Once over the metal doorsill I was in the hallway, with the spare room yawning cavernously to my left.  I didn’t want to think about that and I scuttled on.  I faced an even greater crisis of nerves when I accidentally set the hall phone cord swinging over my head and knew I was just in front of the living room door; who knew what was going on in the dark in the bigger part of the house.  But I went on at last, driven by urinary desperation.  When I finally felt the bathroom doorway to my right I turned in and reaching only my hand out from under the covers, I walked my fingers up the wall till I found the light switch.

Light and safety achieved for the moment, but not security; I quickly and quietly shut the door, popped the lock down, and totally shed my ragged armor.  A quick tinkle, a flush, a hurried wash up, and a drink from our Donald-Duck-and-Nephews tooth brush cup later, and it was time to face the dark again.  Return missions were always easier, to some degree.  They were shorter, and ended with you being back where you were supposed to be, safe in bed with the others.  But there was also added tension.  Childhood drama demanded that this was the part of the story when something happens: “…and he had almost made it when all of a sudden—.”  I threw the raggedy blanket over myself again, covering up head to toe, determined to walk back blind again but upright, since it would be faster. I turned off the light, opened the door as stealthily as I could, and headed out down the hall.  Then...something did happen.

Mom, awakened and alerted by the noisy plumbing, had come to investigate. A woman alone with little kids, a neighborhood menace abroad, she was determined to protect her brood, even if in the darkness and anxiety of the moment she had apparently not counted them and did not realize that one was out of pew—or out to poo, as it were.  Standing in the bedroom door, peering out into the dim hallway, she was confronted with a dark, shapeless, shuffling blob coming right towards her.  So she did what anyone in her position would do.  She screamed.

Under my blanket, blind, terrified, I screamed.  Mom screamed again at the noise.  My brothers, awake and panicked behind her, screamed at our screams. I screamed. She screamed. We all screamed, again and again.  In memory, the screaming seems to go on for about five minutes, but surely it couldn’t have been that long. Mom flicked on the light, I flipped off the blanket and ran to her. Fear dissolved into incredulity, brief anger, relief, and finally laughter.  It was a while before we all settled down to bed again.  The next day the incident had solidified into a hilarious story, recalled with merriment for years to come.  But it was unnerving for a little boy to glimpse, even for an instant, the fear of a parent.

What Happened (Part 5)

 

Another night journey I remember was going to the kitchen to get a drink of water, an even farther trek for a little boy, and one that had to be undertaken without lights since we weren’t supposed to waste electricity.  One time I couldn’t budge anyone else out of bed, so I had to go by myself.  It was a bright summer night, however, and as I moved through hall and living room and dining room the house seemed alive, with the windows open to catch what cooling breezes they could, and the long curtains waved and bellied slowly in the wind.  I got to the kitchen and managed to get my water (climbing on a stool or chair), and outside the window over the sink I could hear the ash trees rustling in the wind and see the back yard.  In those days there was a tall, rather harsh “safety-light” between us and our neighbor Mr. Friedeck, and the yard and garden were lit up like a stage.  I watched for what seemed like a long time, fascinated and a little frightened, wondering if I would witness some revelation of the secret life of the night, so perfect seemed the set up.  Plenty of bugs fluttered around the light.  Neighborhood dogs barked in the distance, restless.  The trees in Mr. Friedeck’s yard bowed and waved like signifying giants in the light-pole glare, their knees lost in shadow.  No robbers or trespassers, bent on nefarious deeds, crossed the stage. 

At last I went back to bed.  I don’t remember the return trip, but I probably scurried; when I was a kid we knew that if anything bad was going to happen, it was probably behind you, and it was better not to look.  In fact, it was a generally held belief that if you didn’t see “it” (whatever “it” was; we called our boogeyman “the Hoofer”) then it couldn’t hurt you.  It was this theory of the safety of non-visibility that led to one of the most storied incidents of my childhood, and one last tale of my juvenile nocturnal wanderings.

What Happened (Part 4)

 

Here’s another one of my earliest memories. It has pathos, and intimacy, and poetry, and natural beauty, and it took place in a bathroom.

How old was I? I must have been three or four, young enough to have to ask Mom to take me to the bathroom at night. It was one of those bright, full moon nights when we didn't need to turn on the light, and I remember the high bathroom window's curtain was drawn back to let in a breeze. Mom looked up at the moon and chanted the old poem to me:

 

"I see the moon,

And the moon sees me.

The moon sees someone

I want to see."

 

I knew she was thinking about Pop, who was out on the road truck driving like he always was. It was wistful, and melancholy, and a bit dreamlike. It was one of the few times when we were little that I actually had her to myself (we could be clamorous and competing when we were in a herd), and we shared a moment. Somehow seeing the moon so high over the trees in the wind amid the wisps of flying clouds so late made me realize that the moon was always there, whether I was watching it or not, and the idea that Pop somewhere might be looking at it at the same time, gave me an inkling of how big and strange the world was.

Stuff&Junk: Squeaky Toys

 

Many we still have, scattered among the siblings. Some, like Lambie, are Lost in the Toy Box forever. For some, like Perry the Penguin, we have replacements. Most of these pictures are off of E-Bay and suchlike, but I have never, ever found a picture of the lion with glasses, walking stick, and bag (which we called Omi, because it had her accoutrements, including her 'purse'.) 

Stuff&Junk: Posters

I bought the map of Shakespeare's Britain (which originally came from National Geographic in 1964) from Denny Bieker in middle school, for $3, an enormous sum for me at the time. It influenced my own map-making for years to come. I've bought a couple of other copies since, one at least from Yesterday's Warehouse, and it is a long-standing dream of mine to have it framed someday.

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.

Old Records