Reading and Me

I have always loved to read and was lucky enough to grow up in a family whose parents read. In fact, my father not only collected books, he even sold encyclopedias for awhile, keeping the sample sets of Childcraft and World Book encyclopedias in his office library. That's why I had already read the reading book when I arrived in the first grade classroom. And that's why my teacher resented me. 

If I'm not mistaken, our First Grade Reader was the same one Toni Morrison quoted in The Bluest Eye, with Dick and Jane, those happy white children, getting into trouble and living the American Dream. That was one of the books on my father's office shelves, so I read it the summer before I started school. Mom had been reading parts of the Jungle Book to us, and I fell in love with stories, even thinking of Mowgli's flute and hearing the flute dance as I write this. 

In my world, the story lives only as fantasy, a story as false as the exotic white-washed Mowgli of Kipling's Jungle Book. I see the racist portrayals now--and the gender stereotypes that persist in cartoons, animated films, and picture books. But I also see the words, the beautiful words like "friend" and "play" and "laugh" and "smile." Good words that have bad effects when their placed in a particular order.

But I'm not getting to my story about my first grade teacher putting me in a corner with a different book because I'd already read the primer she assigned. 

I love to read and have since I dived into my first story. Really, pictures didn't move me as much as words, like Mom reading Jungle Book and my memories of Dick and Jane. 

Morrison's Prelude to The Bluest Eye begins with a quote from the first grade primer:

Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, father, Dick and Jane live in the green and white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress. She wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat. It goes meow-meow. Come and play. Come play with Jane. The kitten will not play. See Mother. Mother is very nice. Mother will you play with Jane? Mother laughs. Laugh, mother laugh. See Father. He is big and strong. Father will you play with Jane? Father is smiling. Smile, Father, smile. See the dog run. Run, dog, run. Look, look. Here comes a friend. The friend will play with Jane. They will play a good game. Play, Jane, play. 

In The Bluest Eye, the words passage loses its punctuation, and its meaning is truncated by the racist world to makes Pecola want blue eyes.

Ceredo, West Virginia

Ceredo Grade School sits empty now, the brick one-story village school teaching only 199 students when it closed in 2018. Ceredo still owns the building, though, and plans to use it for overflow elementary and adult fitness classes. 

I walked past the building a couple of summers ago when my niece graduated from Ceredo-Kenova High School and couldn't help thinking about my first grade teacher, a vaguely blonde woman who didn't approve of my too-high reading level but made sure I looked good for picture day. This odd conflict between responses made no sense to me then. All I wanted was a teacher who liked me, and I did whatever I could think of to make that happen, with smiles and laughter and contriteness. She took me in the classroom bathroom once and spanked my bottom because of my chatter--or at least I thought that's what it was--and I was so sorry so sorry so sorry, even though I really didn't know what I'd done wrong. 

On picture day, my sister Colleen let me ride to school on the back of her bicycle, not because she wanted to, but because our mother wanted us both to bring home good photos, and biking to school meant less time in the hot sun and more curls leftover from that sleepless night wearing wires in our hair. I guess they weren't really cylindered wires, but those rollers secured with bobby pins cut into my scalp so much I counted the dots on the wallpaper just to cope with that barbed fencing poking into my brain. 

Of course, that morning that started out sunny didn't stay that way. Instead, we rode into a wall of rain between the IGA and the school, leaving our curls looking more like mops when we sloshed into the building. Colleen left me in a hurry, rushing off to her fourth grade class. And I dripped my way into the first grade room hoping for a towel or extra shirt to dry me. Much to my surprise, that teacher who didn't like me met me with a hair dryer and a curling iron, stopping class to dry my hair before the photographer arrived. She probably did the same for all of the other girls arriving wet after the rain. But I just remember her singling me out, taking the time to make sure that page of photos I took home to mom looked fine. 

Japanese Beetles

A skeletal effect

they call it

tree of bones

leftovers 

showing something 

lived

because they 

died

pocked leaves

bringing back

a joyful dog

racing around

a backyard

carrying 

her brother’s 

thigh

a happy game of fetch

Just Days

I don't remember many Independence Day celebrations, mostly because they weren't very memorable. A pleasant memory did happen in Galesburg, IL, watching fireworks from a paddle boat in the middle of Lake Storey. And that is really the extent of the memory. Pleasantly floating on a dark lake while sky flowers exploded above me, I forgot my pre-teen problems, even broken teeth and high water pants. I think someone paddled out there with me, but I don't remember who. I just really liked the contrast--dark quiet broken by cracks of colored light.

I think most 4th of Julys meant dad grilled bratwurst over charcoal while mom did the rest.  But that food memory really stands out when everyone but me lived in Gahanna, Ohio, because I was teaching high school about 100 miles to the North and West. On the 4th, I'd drive up in my Escort, probably carrying a G.D. Ritzy's garden salad to avoid the greasy brat. One summer I came back home and met old college friends in downtown Columbus to watch fireworks flash over the Scioto River. We sat and drank white wine spritzers made with Faygo Frosh and Gallo Chablis while we watched the display shot in time to the 1812 Overture.

Here in Charleston, IL, I remember one fun 4th of July before Mattoon and Charleston combined their fireworks shows out at the airport. It was the year my husband (now ex-husband) and I moved to Charleston, and I really thought we had a chance. It was a cicada year, and our house bordered a wooded ravine, so the hum of wings set the season's scene. As really the first house in Heritage Woods, just past the student apartments and the tiny playground, we easily walked to the campus pond where they lit off flaming peonies and a brocade of trailing stars.

Most of my Independence Days, though, are just days, with maybe a quick drive to the hospital across from the airport to see the sky fill with color quickly enough to get home before at least one dog jumps through a screen and runs away.

Two-Line Poems

This time 

rain brought 

a gopher 

out of its burrow, 

a race 

across a road 

to the acre 

beside the creek, 

high grasses 

lines of new trees 

putting roots into 

flood plain 

still soft enough 

to disappear 

before that woman 

with her dog 

crosses the bridge. 

Less than 

a 50 yard dash

a doe watches, 

face the color of Florida sand, 

not Gulf but Atlantic 

where sea traffic 

tans grains 

from that rice white 

to a yellow brown glow, 

a bright contrast 

to the still green 

soy beans 

under foot 

a shade dimming 

as she turns 

and waves goodbye. 

If I close my eyes long enough

that fan on an end table 

rolls up the aisle

offering water

pretzels

white noise

letting me drift

over pages of my kindle

missed paragraphs

filled with cat whistles

above the clouds.