|
|
Patricia's Porch Talk |
|
|
Write:
|
It was a golden afternoon, with peripheral hues in reds and orange. To the passing motorists and the man blowing leaves from his driveway, we probably looked like two ordinary people out for a leisurely afternoon stroll in the November sun. We couldn’t see the uneven sidewalk for the leaves but chose to walk there anyway, trudging through mounds of red, yellow, and gold and listening to the sounds of dry leaves crunching beneath our feet. I was secretly grateful the leaves had not been collected. Only I knew that this would be no ordinary walk….or that the golden hues would change to a bittersweet mist with sepia overtones just around the corner. As we rounded the corner, my friend asked, ‘Is that it? You said it was a gingerbread house.” “No. That isn’t it. But it’s in this block. ” He gestured…“How about that one?” “No. That’s where Bertie lived. It’s on the other side.” Suddenly I found myself standing in front of the steps that rose from the sidewalk. It was still as quaint and wonderful as I remembered. Sure, it had undergone a face lift or two over the years, but I would know it anywhere. I knew a high-ceilinged living room waited just inside the door and to the right, and that crackling, hissing sounds came from the fireplace the way they always did on crisp November afternoons. I knew that in the rear, a tight row of windows stretched clear around the corner and went partway down the other side, marking a second floor sunroom converted to a baby nursery. I hung old sheets over those windows against a hot afternoon sun that could turn the room into an oven…. too warm for a napping infant. Somewhere there’s a picture of my oldest son standing in the front yard, right over there, with snow over the tops of his galoshes, grinning and squinting from the glare. There are pictures also of several children gathered around an outdoor table in their party hats. The birthday boy is my youngest son, sporting a cast. The pictures were taken at his second birthday party, over there, under that tr….. Wait! What happened to the tree? It was huge with branches that shaded the entire front yard. I used to lie awake, listening with one ear for the mockingbird that lived in the branches near my upstairs window and his amazing repertoire of bird, car, and cat sounds blended with an occasional wolf whistle, while with the other I listened to the sounds of sleeping children. I knew that a treasure was hidden in the basement, or at one time it was. The house was built shortly after the turn of the century when neighborhood plays were popular, and its owner had an elaborate stage erected in the basement, complete with flood lights and draw curtains. A blue door with a bright star on it, to the right of the stage, led to his daughters’ dressing room. However, for me the basement merely served as a laundry room, and I carried at least fifty-thousand baskets of folded diapers past the stage and up the steep steps, although I did sometimes stop and stare at the raised stage in wonder and try to imagine what it had been like in the old days when it was filled with budding stars. The dining room was empty when we first moved in so naturally I was excited when a scratched and scarred Duncan Fyffe table badly in need of restoration services and six mismatched chairs finally moved in with us. This reminded me of another picture, this one made at the head of that battered old table. In the photo, my tiny daughter smiles brightly and reaches out to the camera from her high chair, realizing somehow that the special occasion is all about her. There’s a smear of white birthday cake frosting across her chin. I planted purple Sweet William seeds in the back yard but they didn’t sprout and I was so surprised when I rounded a corner a whole year later and stumbled upon a whole bed of them nodding in the warm spring breeze. As we moved away, keeping inside the layer of leaves, I could see a tiny, tow-headed boy in the golden light up ahead, wobbling and weaving his first two-wheeler down the sidewalk. He appeared worried and kept glancing at his training wheels as if to make sure they were still on the job. I wonder if the little tow-headed boy remembered any of this the first time my granddaughter Amy wobbled away on her new bike. I wonder if he told her, ‘Don’t worry. See these little wheels? They’ll keep you from falling.” The wind grew chilly and we drew our coats closer around us as colorful leaves swirled at our feet, two friends talking easily about everything from politics to poetry…and I made a mental note to search for several old photographs.
|
