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The Monthly [In]Sanity Check - July 2003 Memoir Straight from DoaSO... childhood memories. July 12th. -------- When I woke up this morning, a patch of bright sun on a tree caught my attention. I walked to the window and looked out, remembering when I used to look out of my window all the time, sometimes open it for the fresh air, sometimes hanging out of the window, watching Tiggy on the roof of the front porch, or an escaped Silly climb out onto tree branches. I don't look out that window every morning and evening like I used to anymore. When I was eight or nine, the habit kind of faded into nothing. The window is very grungy, covered in the dirt of years, and the trees are overgrown. I no longer watch birds caring for their chicks or Tiggy on the porch roof, looking back in the window at me or rolling around in a patch of sun. But today, I was called to look outside. Birds were chirping as I looked out at the virtual layers of treetops... understory and canopy... that my windows are between. I can see the little blurs that must be the extremely old string of Christmas lights that were hung on one of the trees about sixteen years ago, when this house was owned by someone else, and then never came completely down. I can see the tree that grows through the tall fence, where Mum and Dad made the fencebuilders leave an opening so that the tree could grow instead of being cut down. I can see the cloudless sky that whisked my thoughts back to memories I didn't know I still had, of summers with all the windows open as I watched videos or did something with beads. I can remember those summers too; the days when each summer/fall Dad brought home chicks or ducklings. The days when I used to climb trees with Tiggy and watch the farmer in the next lot harvesting or preparing for harvest. Until the age that I went to school, I had never met someone my age, but at that point I didn't care. I had stuffed animals that I pretended had minds and voices and, amazingly enough, magical powers, and I had Tiggy. Those were the days when I hiked around the yard and pretended to talk to trees and the days when I wondered what beaches looked like, and imagined waves in front of me and sand underfoot, and wind blowing all around me.... I can remember walks with or without a strange little boy who said sorry for everything he thought he did wrong, and was very polite. This boy was four years younger than me. I can remember that these walks went through green forests, with ferns and vines and maples and oaks and evergreens. I can remember when the pool was built and I got the first little deck as a treehouse-minus-tree, to my happiness, and used to sit up there until it was too dark to see writing in a journal, which is currently within reach under my bed. The summers when I would visit the elderly neighbor and the summers when I constantly worried about how Tiggy drooled, and the summers when I drew a lot with crayons and markers and pastels and colored pencils. And then, ten minutes after stepping to the window, I stepped back, knowing that two-dimensional emotions were a thing of the past, that I no longer had Tiggy, that there is no magic that makes the trees or the stuffed animals talk, that we no longer get chicks or ducklings, that life isn't always as nice as a humid summer evening.... -Adrienne |