The Smell of Spring

I moved to LA in September of 1994. And it rained like it was nobody's business. People kept apologizing to me for the weather. It was the first year of El Niño and it rained like it was Michigan or something. But I didn't mind. It wasn't snow. And it reminded me of home.

I had a newish friend who lived in Ojai and I had a terrible crush on him. When I was bored at my very dull temp jobs, I wrote letters to him and various other friends. Actual letters. That I printed out and mailed. Or, dare I say it, wrote by hand.

This is a letter I sent him once. (And I know how incredibly queer [i.e. corny] it was to write such a letter, but I was a literary twit. And he was appreciative. Or pretended to be. And what I wrote in my previous blog entry reminded me of this and I thought you might like it. Here goes:

The smell of spring reminds me of my mother.

In May and June my best friend Jenifer and I would ride our bikes to school. We’d meet halfway between our houses and then off we’d go. My mom, in her robe, would walk with me to the end of the driveway. (Our driveway had never been sealed after it was first paved, so over the years it became very gravely. After long drives, even if I was asleep in the car, I could always tell we were home when I heard the wheels crunch on the salt and pepper way. It toughened our feet in the summertime and hampered roller skating. I can hear my bike’s tires slowly scrunching down the drive.) The outdoors was magical, like it is only at certain times. Like a Friday morning at 7:15 in May in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The air all yellowy-new with the sun. Kind of cold. The magnolias blooming and their pink and white petals falling much too soon—they always opened too early, never waiting for that last killing frost. It smelled good, like my mom and the sun and spring. Like dew and grass. It smelled like the morning, like quiet.

I’d be scared to leave my mom and go riding alone down the long street that would curve so I couldn’t look back anymore to see her wave. But she did always keep waving ‘till I rounded that bend. Maybe even after, who can say? And there would be lilacs. And I would be afraid some bad person would get me before I got to Jenifer. My ears would start to feel very cold and my head would hurt, just like it still does when a cool wind sneaks into my ears, even on an early summer morning. I’d probably be a little late and Jenifer would meet me at the end of my street not bothering to stop at the halfway point. Then we’d ride together on our shiny ten speed bikes. No, then we probably still had the hand-me-down banana-seat bikes.

We’d always have sore throats and be thoroughly winded by Wellesley Court so we’d stop there and rest before the big hill at Buxton. These are the subdivision roads of my neighborhood, roads I could traverse in my sleep at one time, but now down which I haven’t been in years. We’d cut the corner at Nicholas and what was that street? I think I’ve jumbled them all by now. But we’d sneak through someone’s driveway to cut that corner. We always were careful, just as our mothers had admonished when they waved goodbye. No, I’m sure Jenifer's mom never troubled to see her out. But mine did, with concern on her face.

And when we got to school our silence was broken as so many other kids milled about at the bike racks. And by that time the good smell and memory are over anyway, because mostly the vision is of my mom, and the end of the driveway, and the golden misty quality of the light, and the placement of the houses on my childhood street, frozen that way. Before Mr. F went to jail and sold off the lots on either side of his big old house, and before some angry people burned down a house on one of those new lots, but after the boy in the house across the way molested me, but before I told my parents the whole story. And anyway, it was before a lot of stuff, and after other things, too. But even here, far across the country, in the middle of winter, I smell that Michigan morning and I am reminded that I have always been loved, have always loved, will always be loved.

And that's the end. It could use some editing, but that wouldn't be honest. What a queer mother fucker I am, huh?

The Muddy Hillside

So. Frank E. Doherty Elementary School. There were two playgrounds: The Upper L and The Lower L. I don't know if L was spelled L or what. I'm assuming it meant level. The Lower L was for kindergartners through third graders and The Upper L for fourth and fifth. Now, Doherty is on a lovely plot of land in beautiful West Bloomfield, Mich. That sounds like I'm being facetious, but I'm not; most of West Bloomfield is really quite delightful. Doherty especially. You drive up a longish driveway lined by pine trees on at least one side. The other side might just be regular trees. Through the stand of pines on your right you can see the big field area of the rather massive Lower L playground. Then the school presents itself, nestled comfortably in the landscape. There's a cul-de-sac designed, my mother felt, by a mad man (once those buses were in there, you were trapped). If you go off to left of the school there's a small parking lot at the base of a rolling lawn (where we played kickball). It was a good place to park and neck when in high school. That lawn then melded with The Upper L playground which swept down to a fence, a river (stream?) and the woods behind. There was a path through the woods that led to a big field and then to a subdivision. Just before the woods ended and the field began there was a snowball bush from which I stole huge white puffs for my mother in the spring. They say the woods were haunted, but when don't they say that?

Why the hell am I giving you this tour, she muttered to herself. Oh yeah! Okay. In the spring it rains in Michigan. (In the fall, winter, and summer it rains in Michigan.) The Lower L playground had it's own hillside, a bit more steep then The Upper L's rolling lawn. And it wasn't so much lawn because it was more constantly covered with children. (Why did this subject come into my head this morning? Oh, I know. It was already 66 degrees in the house when I got up this morning. It's been raining (gleefully) in LA this week. This is a good thing. It makes my garden grow. And it makes me happy. The world looks good and smells good and reminds me of home. But it's been much colder in the mornings before today. And when I let the Wiener out the back door, the air was soft and it smelled just like my youth.) (This reminds me of a letter I wrote to a guy I had a crush on when I first moved here. A bit of a lyrical description of a moment in my childhood. I'll look for it. It might interest you.)

In the spring, the hill was mud. My best friend Jenifer (yes, just the one N) and I felt that we needed to create roads to help the water drain down the hill and out the front gate. It did not need us to do this. But my, it was oddly satisfying. We spent every recess (three a day) climbing up and down, dragging the heels of our boots to make canals that connected to other canals and so on and so on. It was a messy job. The mud caked high on my hand-me-down boots. They had zippers which became useless. For a while at least, that wasn't much of a problem because they were too big. I remember one staying sucked in the mud while I kept moving. Stepped right out of it. I stood there on one leg, my little white-socked foot waving in the air until Jenifer rescued me. She was good like that.

The tenacity with which we worked on our public works project was astounding. I suspect our tongues were planted securely at the corners of our lips, to ensure the world of our determination. It was so satisfying watching our girl-made river rush out the front gate as directed by our heel-dug troughs. We may or may not have been yelled at by the recess monitors. And our mothers, for that matter. And, truth be told, this might have just happened on one day. But I don't think so. I think it was an epic project, like the Big Dig. I think our work was never done.

From the Corners of My Mind

I have warm fuzzy feelings about the memories of my youth. I'm not idealizing my childhood. It was all well and good and all, but certainly not ideal.

Youth is crap; I much prefer being an adult. Why, you ask? First off, children's priorities are all 'effed up. God, I remember stuff that as a child I thought was the end all be all most important thing ever! And that was crap! Needing the electronic game Merlin? I assure you, I did not need that game (I did get it, however, for Chanukah I think? Although, then we had to get batteries for it. Argh, the angst.).

Oh the things I thought were a big deal - that I prioritized worrying about! Being disruptive in school (talking, duh) and living in fear that the teacher was gonna call my parents. And if she did, it was certainly going to be the end of the world. Or when I was a little older, once I had my period, spending the entire freaking school day terrified that I'd bleed on my pants. You can have no idea how much time I wasted suffering over that, figuratively wringing my hands. All right, I coulda used Zoloft back in the day, but still! If only my future self could have visited me back then and said, kid, listen, chill.

And children have no power! Not that I would have wanted power. Can you imagine if I'd had power? That would have been bad. I mean, come on, my priorities were all wrong.

And you're a real live person (albeit with ridiculous notions) in a tiny body and no one takes you seriously (for good reason). But I remember feeling mighty grown-up as a five year old. And at ten? Sheesh, don't get me started. (Too late.)

Anyhoo, my point (lordy, I wonder how often I'm gonna say that during my life of blogging). I like to think about things and places from my youth. Objects that I had. Places where I spent lots of time. I like to wander through my elementary school in my mind's eye (I feel like after saying, "mind's eye," I should make some oooo eeee oooo noise. Dunno why).

I had a pretty snazzy elementary school. Frank E. Doherty, West Bloomfield, Michigan. They built it, gee, probably around 1969 (also when I was built). I like to stroll around there in my brain. Do you ever tour places in your brain that you thought you forgot? I recommend it; I find it very satisfying. Doherty's architecture was very open, with a large oval library in the center of the school. It was sunken! Like a living room! And it was ringed by shelves that were topped by Formica counters. So as you walked through the halls outside of the library, those counter tops were proper counter-top height. And it was just open walls into the library, and of course across to the other side. Alrighty then, this can make no possible sense to you, so I'll stop. Suffice it to say, nice school. Wait, not sufficient, I do want to mention the little nook down the little hallway off the gym/cafeteria. Near the incinerator, the janitor (I want to say Mr. Booker, but that sounds suspect to me) had a small cranny (though he was not a small man). I think it was even decorated and had a TV and a wing-back chair. Not sure why I ever got to go back there (never for nefarious reasons, I assure you), but I do recall it being a cozy wonderland.

Seriously now, do you ever do that? Can you ride a bike through the streets of the neighborhood of your youth, in your brain? And just as you think you couldn't possibly remember what's around the next corner, you ride along and there it is, your memory of the next corner?

Go think about something pleasant that you haven't thought about in years. Report back.

xo

Jo