Like lightning

LOST YEARS

 

It can't be more than yesterday that ladies leaned over my carriage and kitchey cooed me. I loved when my mother smiled and told them I was already able to hold on to my play pen and pull myself up. Oh, the tongue clicking would make me gurgle, blow tiny bubbles. Then the ladies would disappear and mommy would get angry at me because I sometimes would throw my new rattle out of the carriage. I wanted to tell her I didn't mean to do that. It was just an accident, but my words are still unformed inside of me. They are anxious to come out but will have to wait a long time.

 

How did those hard things get in my mouth? They hurt, make me cry. Daddy looks in and Janet, my mom, two of my teeth are starting to come thru and that is why I cry so much.  She sticks something in there for me to suck on. I don't like it at all but every time I spit it out, Mommy keeps sticking it back in.

 

It doesn't feel good to me when my bottom is all wet, and sometimes smells bad, but it isn't my fault. It happens even when I am sound asleep. It upsets my mommy and me too but that's the way it is.

 

I think I sleep too much because one morning I woke up and Mommy was all excited. She was getting all ready for company. Children I see but can't yet talk to are coming to my first birthday party. The house smells good and pretty flowers are on the table. A funny man is dressed in all different colors, has a red ball on his nose and does tricks with balloons. Everybody, except me, has a plate of ice cream with stripes in it, pink, white and chocolate. It's my birthday but I don't get any ice cream. My bottom is wet again and I'm tired, want my milk bottle and to be left alone in my crib.

 

A walking, talking, loveable, cute me goes to kindergarten. Mommy walks me there or if the weather is bad, daddy drives me. If my mommy weren't my mommy, I would be happy to have Miss Wolfson, the kindergarten teach, be my mommy. She is taller, stronger, prettier, plays piano and hums songs I don't know but like, so we can take naps. This is the class I hope to stay in for my whole life but when I am six I am not asked, but am simply moved into first grade, then second and am skipped the third because Miss Chowning I'm two smart for second grade. Daddy was so pleased, proud of me that he took me to the corner drugstore and bought me anything I wanted. I chose a three decker sundae, chocolate, vanilla and cherry, lots of fudge and walnuts. I was glad he sat with me because I couldn't eat all of that without getting sick and he helped me.

 

Did I know I was cute? No. Did I know I was smart? No but when I was sent from the 6th grade to a special school that I would be able, if I stayed smart, finish in two years instead of four. This time Mommy bought me a leather book bag, three new school dresses and shoes that tied instead of having buttons. I earned them by getting honor marks and going on to high school at age 13, just about the youngest in the huge, brick school. It was very hard to make friends because I lived far from this special school but I made one special one, a less than cute Italian girl named Mary Balford. We paired up in less than a week. We studied and we laughed every day. Once when we accidentally spilled an entire bucket of dirty floor washing water over the Home Ec room, as we mopped and mopped, we actually peed in our pants from laughing so hard. What a memory. I wonder even now if Mary is alive, well, principal of some foreign school and if she remembers our slogan, 'Save the Bucket.'

 

Boy chasing came into my world. The cute ones most likely avoided me because I was younger, smarter than they were. Sometimes I cursed my good fortune. My high school prom date, who I thought I might eventually marry some day, stood me up. I paced our living room, almost wore a hole in it, kept watching out the window, but Donnie never called or showed up. Would you believe his excuse the next day, he broke his leg and was in the hospital? I didn't–but it was true. I came to visit him when he came home. Like an over-weight king he lounged back on a chaise lounge, his heavy full cast to his knee itching all the time. His dad unwound a coat hanger so Donnie could get inside the cast and manage some relief. It took almost three months before he could use crutches, get around a little. Of course, he didn't get around to me and that was no problem. I had just about forgotten him by then and was open to other opportunities.

 

Getting my MBA at U of PA, a great job with an elite accounting firm, taking care of my home, my husband, I enjoyed then and now my Sunday walks, pushing Andy and Tandy in their heavy perambulater.

 

I have their rattles tied with short pink ribbons hanging inside so I don't have to keep picking the toys up from the dirty pavement–and the ribbons are too short for the girls to strangle themselves.

 

There are so many moments, seasons, times in my thirty nine years, but most have not survived, are surely lost in a maelstrom but once in a while a new one peeps out and I smile or even shed a brief tear.