the yellow backpack

you end up with treasures.

I misread the word count for my memoir assignment, and thus, I ended up with this treasure that got cut from the final draft.  I got a B on my paper– I probably deserved it; though my professor is a stickler for writing, she couldn’t possibly give a B to my childhood.  I loved it.

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Scribbled down on the pad of paper that always sits by the phone is written “This ain’t Mayberry. Gears, you must lock your doors.”  My neighbor was the last to touch the pencil that sat next to the note.

I wouldn’t have known it was my neighbor (I mean, we certainly weren’t home when she most likely repeatedly knocked on the front door, waited, then peaked her head in and then led herself through the dining room into the kitchen).  This note of warning wasn’t the first, so I knew her handwriting.

With my detective work, I was able to trace that same handwriting to the mysterious presents that appeared under our Christmas tree the year that the tree would have been lonely.  We cried, celebrated, and analyzed that handwriting inside and out.  Miss Sneaky got away 2 years before we put together her scheme of generosity.

You know those visions of neighbors borrowing eggs from one another and running next door to borrow sugar and vanilla?  Well my family doesn’t cook enough to have such needs, but our printer never works.  Thus, sometimes I sneak next door or up the street and punch in 1799 to my neighbor’s garage code, say hello to barking Chaos and Maddy, maybe pick up a snack, print a few pages, and head back home.

4907 S. Bothwell, Springfield, MO 65804.

I learned that address back in preschool while my mom and I sat in the carpool line picking up my sister from 3^rd grade.  I used to proudly write it on the paper that fancy paper with 2 lines and the dashed ones in between.  I still write it now, just this time it’s on FAFSA and leasing contracts and other boring things.  That brick house, in the neighborhood with the distinctive lighted mailboxes, will always be home.

Instead of a 10 minute drive from Kickapoo High School every day, I drive 9 hours 3 or 4 times a year to that house.   Out front there are always more cars than we own.  I guess the open door policy is taken seriously (though for my brother’s friends I think it’s more of an open pantry policy).  From the street, you can often see James at the piano and hear him belting out “Let it be” slightly off-tune accompanied by Robert’s pretend war sounds as he runs frantically around the house dodging make-believe bullets.

There used to be a wall that would have closed the dining room, but one afternoon my dad decided to knock it down, add a pillar, and open up the entire area.  It was early December and my dad promised he’d have it done by the new year, so my mom asked of what year.  Thus, he got the okay and the four little kids hammered away, making coloring on the walls less rebellious. My brother Robert was too young to remember the afternoon with the hammers, and I think that’s why he had an addiction to coloring on the walls.  Though he’d get a stern “let’s talk” moment, mom liked his little pictures too much to paint over them, so for months they were the mural inviting you downstairs.

Upstairs in the living room is the piano, and most activity surrounded this both loved and loathed instrument (it depended on if you were made to play or not).  If it wasn’t your turn to play, you waited anything but patiently to one-up the sibling, but as soon as mom called your name, a million things immediately appeared on your to-do list at age 12.

The hallway to the bedrooms upstairs is also a basketball court.  On either end of the hall basketball nets are flung over the doors and an innovative game often becomes viciously competitive.  Depending on which door you have has a large say on how well you do.  On one door hangs the pull-up bar blocking part of the goal.  If it weren’t bolted into the frame, it’d certainly be removed.  The big kick of getting strong was years ago with only a few resurgence every month or two.  Here’s the problem: the thermostat is right in the middle of the basketball court, right about half court.  One bad throw and bam it’s gone.  Actually, it’s bam it needs duct tape.  Some day it’ll be fixed, but since the players are always in season, there’s no urgency.

Downstairs there’s a big, heavy duty trash can that makes me cringe.  It’s practical but downright ugly.  My brother has too many friends over and there’s too much activity to have one of those trash cans with imprinted elephants or one that sits on a doily. There are two TV’s.  Why, I don’t know, because I don’t know how to use either.  We just got cable last year, and that’s only because we realized that our family was completed aloof to the news, outside world, and pop culture.  I’m at college now, have cable, but I’m trained (or should I say blessed?) to not watch it.  Masking tape draws 4 big boxes, marking out the boundaries for a four-square game. When the tape is pulled up, the carpet will be bleached just a little.

If you turn your back to the TV’s you step from the college dorm room into grandmother’s house in the woods.  Dominating one wall is an old pump organ, and it demands a chord or two every time I walk by.  Its strength makes even the most simple melody ring with power.  To its left is the Grandfather clock, literally from my grandfather, that stands slightly crooked because when James was little he knocked it over.  The tears streaming down the small, red 6 year old’s face made my mom’s treasure possession no longer center of her concern.

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THE END (of the part that was cut).

In: Uncategorized | tags: Family. | #