Long Island children in the Big Land.
We got so red and faint, somebody said "sun stroke."
They took the babies to the doctor right away.
I remember, worried.
The stretchers, white sheeted and silver serious.
Coming in and out of really there. Fainting away. Coming back. Fainting away. Coming back. Like memories!
We were going to be okay.
Mama likes to remind that even that time God was watching over us.
It was a friend of hers from high school who was the seeing doctor seeing us.
My Daddy will tell you that on the other long trip out to Mich-gan is when Mommy could hardly wait to get there, so stopping to pee every five minutes was getting really annoying. Which is why, Daddy says, I told Mama we HAD TO STOP, for just a minute...
Because, YES, I am the big CHEESE.
We don't normally go on the side of the road, Mama reminded as I did, real quick.
LIKE a DOG, I remember.
That was in the red car...Daddy would remember that, too.
White hot seats.
And all the land.
Silver radio dials and barefeet. Until it was time to hurry up and get those shoes on.
To Mama Sherry it was emotions boiling over. Cause enough to make everybody else shut it down lest somebody says something or acts funny or otherwise burbles out how emotional things are.
Mama had runned off to college, met a boy (our Daddy), moved clear across the country to NEW YORK, and had children. So this scene is a mix of us playing the role of the children she'd had and a young couple trying to have a vacation/homecoming/visit/demonstration of being just as good a grown ups as Sherry's heroes.
A glance at Daddy to ground somewhere between trying to figure out how to act and just being me. We were "the babies" even though we had some years on us.
There they are! Old people and little people all thinking at the same time.
There they are!!!!!
Just where mama left 'em. I could hearsee her putting things together in her mind. She'd been looking and looking at the few photographs she had of them back in New York. And at first there was no commotion to get in the way between mama's memories being right in place and everything being okay. But then Time went by. Everyday was growing our lives and Daddy's in the City and all this commotion made mama worry. It was expensive to wait until really late at night to call The Farm and find out.
But Daddy showed her the money and encouraged her to go ahead and find out.
Finding out seemed to be making sure. Making sure that everything is okay. Seemed like a simple thing TO DO. So we teamed up on mama to get her to stop crying so hard during the long afternoons. We made a good team too. We reminded each other of what TO DO.
There was the kind of fluttering in our chests that day, that went all around us as everybody thought and said, There they are.
That's them, mama just barely said out loud. And the fluttering escaped out of mama and got on me and Daddy. Daddy moved his head from side to side in one big move and blew out some air like he was glad the long road trip was over and now he'd have to see what TO DO next. To my wondering eyes about the fluttering he made a cheesy smile. That was my job. To smile!
I could do that, better than wrestling the fluttering into something else. Better than planning in one minute how to explain the years in between being a baby and being just me now. 'Sides that plan kept unraveling like a ball of string, getting all messy, making me mad quick.
The next time we went out there, Mama and I walked far away from the house. And in the trees between the fields, there was Mama's clubhouse, still.
Nothing much left, really, but look...
A thin wood kind of crate, sagging slanting to the side a little. And some things that Mama seemed awfully glad to find, I can't remember EVERYTHING even though I want to. So I try to relax a little bit from being so intense and the magic comes on me. I remember.
Me and mama walked out way past the farmhouse and along the side of a gigantic field. I can feel us walking. We're fragile compared to the sights and sounds. And I don't want to get hurt to prove that this is true. The grasses are sharp and the corn is crispy, the dirt is thick like you might sink down forever. The sun is so bright and harsh we have to look at each other with hands over eyes even though we're sticking close together. Mama's foot steps and her breathing. Not worried. And we don't have to slide into sad as long as we take it all in.
There was a boat. Standing up straight, like Nana and Pop-Pop's Mary house.
We couldn't believe it was still light blue because the brightness of the sun fades every color.
It was taller than me, like Mama. But mama explained that when she lived here with her grandparents the boat was big like a ship. She'd go boating on the oceans in the fields, and then dock. Fix herself something good to eat. Check on her box of secret treasures...key holder, jumping beans, jax and ball, marbles. Mama's marbles were in one place and SAFE. And that WAS IT. That was being OKAY. Then she'd creep, on account of the injuns, over to the barn and work up the nerve to climb up into her very most secret place.
Pretty sure we found something from the kitchen still in the clubhouse and even though it was rustydirtmaybe a little muddy covered, we needed to bring it back inside. Even though it wasn't good anymore it was important, like taking it all in. Mama was showing me how to have wisdom. It was kind of heavy, like it was kind of far back to inside. It was something we might have to worry about. Something that might make us slide into sad. Or maybe jump up into laughing. Might make us. It was a something. I'd tried to explain to mama how it was a something us girls had between us and on our own too. Mama explained back that it was something called wisdom. And us walking all the way out here to mama's old clubhouse, it couldn't bring back mama's childhood and it couldn't take mine from me. Our wisdoms weren't like no marbles. But they could get disturbed. Mama said that was when we let our wisdoms act like emotions. I looked around. All around. Nobody else was coming. So it was safe for my mama to be telling me things right out loud like this.
Since it was safe we decided TOGETHER to stall Time. It was practicing one of the wisdoms. Not eveybody could do it. It was a luxury, really, which made us want to hide in the big sky so nobody'd be jealous of us having a luxury for a minute. Mama said since we'd done so many chores in New York and been so good on the far, far ride to get her home, we could have a luxury for a minute.
It was glorious like the day. We got to step back in time and into time at the same time. We traveled back in mama's mind to her being my exact age just there about and so we were the SAME! We were two different sizes and our eyes were different colors, but we were kind of the SAME.
FAMILY. Mama said it loud and proud and we put our hands out and made a hand pile agreement. If one of us paused in the piling, in taking the lead, the other one of us went ahead and took it, 'cept for when we decided together to just pause. Our wisdoms could get tumbled up with our emotions in a fast hand pile and except for doing that with each other, that wasn't safe.
By the time mama wanted to get heading to the next special place on our memory tour I didn't want to go. Mama needed to know what I was feeling. And it may have been the first time in my life that I felt whatever it was and could explain it at the same time, so that made me feel something besides. Mama said that was a good thing. So I explained how I always had that in my head all the time. It wasn't anybody else's voice in my head but it was like an Indian Guide.
What do you know about Indian Guides? My mother wanted to know as we drifted in between times in life and real place and all this time traveling together.
Well, do you remember when we used to go on bike rides together? And go walking in nature?
She did, of course, mama's memory was PERFECT. The only hard part, for her, was multiplying her memories with so much family. That's why she got annoyed sometimes...between doing the chores and doing art and keeping grown up things IN ORDER, AND her memories being multiplied in all of our memory-making, well, things could get a little overwhelming. Mama whispered the word like somebody might run up out of the fields and find out about her not being 100 percent PERFECT.
Not sure now if we laughed or cried at seeing only each other up so close in our minds and our hearts and in person. I think we were trying so hard to work on our psychology that we were forced to be okay with whatever was happening. But that was worry. So we had to stick together. So much working on and working with made me sink into sad and that mightah ruined the day. Mama PROMISED it didn't ruin the day. And she said she could SEE me. She could see ME.
Nothing else mattered really. Except it did, I knew in my mind, because Time goes faster and faster and everybody has to move away from wherever they are and EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING happens.
Mama wisdomed this. I looked around and we were still safe. Mama kept being quiet until I asked her what she was doing exactly?!? Mama said she was just letting EVERYTHING happen. Just like that. And it wasn't making her slide into sad or jump around like she needed to pee or laugh. It wasn't bad or good. She let me ask her all about it. And I let the Indian Guide in me put my hands on her head and her hair to see mama.
Mama kept reminding me to remind myself that it was just me SEEING Mama. Then she asked me what I saw? And it was hard to explain because it was sooooooooooooooooo easy. Just mama! I could see in all her memories now that I knew EVERYTHING. That was part of the mission of our trip. Our trip within our trip 'cuz the boys weren't in on it. And I could see in all MY memories, even the ones that there'd been no way to tell Mama. She'd let me have those ones to myself anyway. 'Magination was one of the wisdoms and ALL mama's babies had it. I made sure as the biggest sister. And each one seemed to have come with it. Mama nurtured it! She let Michael do his carpentry. And Eddie create miniature worlds with all our toys. And Carrie sing made-up lullabies to her baby dolls. MaryBeth could always imagine herself on a porch swing or hanging offa Daddy's arms spinning around the yard. Even Stephen came along lastly with an abundance of wisdoms. But that day in mama's clubhouse we didn't know yet how he mighta been born the baby but he'd have the personality of a settled down old man by the time he could walk. This was before the Little Kids all came along.
Mama sprung a hard one on me halfway to the barn. I dropped her hand like I was throwing away a newspaper. What are we going to do if there's a big spider web? she'd asked me.
I couldn't answer because I didn't know.
WHY ARE YOU MAD????? She tried not to laugh, it seemed like, as she pressed more buttons on my forehead.
YOU JUST LET ME SEE THAT EVERYTHING JUST HAPPENS!!!! I hollered as my temperature flew to my face. Sometimes the fluttering flew through my whole body and shot out my mouth.
Race YA!!!!! Mama hollered back and was moving out of the steady in a heartbeat.
