Mine was a full-service mom whose selfless measures of accommodation put the men of Texaco to shame. Or maybe her work was simply the result of a sense of humor that I missed completely. She didn’t want to face the public humiliation brought on by her son walking out of the house wearing his Fruit of the Loom undies over his head. It could have been that she severely underestimated my intelligence and displayed my clothes in this fashion in case there was any doubt on my part as to which articles of clothing went where on my body.
You’re probably wondering why she did this. There on the bathroom floor, as usual, my mother had laid my clothes out in the shape of my body, my underwear layered on top. Careful not to wake my older brother, Bobby, snoozing across the room, I slipped out of bed and stumbled my way into the hallway and toward the bathroom, led only by the dim glow of the nightlight and a familiarity with the route. With a gentle shake of my shoulders, a kiss on my cheek, and the words It’s time whispered by my mom, I woke at five thirty in the morning to prepare for my newspaper route.
Those same winds blew my father and me apart.
This reunion of spirits has transformed me into someone both wiser and more innocent, leaving me to feel both old and young.Īnd with this new gift of recollection, my memories turn to that boy and to the summer of 1960, when the winds of change blew across our rooftops and through the screen doors, turning the simple, manageable world of my suburban neighborhood into something unfamiliar, something uncomfortable. There he sat beneath an oak tree patiently awaiting my return, as if I’d simply taken a day-long fishing trip. They remained a mystery and a void-a midwestern landscape of never-ending pitch-blackness where I brushed up against people and objects but could never assign them faces or names, much less attach feelings to our brief encounters.īut through a miraculous act of divine grace, I found my way back home to discover the child I’d forgotten, the boy I’d abandoned supposedly for the good of us both. Until recently my early childhood memories weren’t readily available for recollection.
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