My first memories are of sunlight, heat, and iron, of Daddy holding me steady while I sat astride a black mailbox welded to an antique wagon wheel spoke while Mama took our picture. It was blazing hot, but I trusted them, and it only took a minute. My next memory is of hills and and an old cellar covered in irises and a black & white dog who stayed at my side no matter what. There were stones in a circle around our largest tree, a burned stump that resembled a howling wolf, and a rock-walled wellhouse that I was not to go near. There were red & white Hereford cows who would come to the gate and eat grass from my hand, and there was sand in the field where my dog and I played at mudpies and castles while Mama and Daddy moved the irrigation pipe lines over 21 rows to set the water for the next cycle. Back and forth across that field, they moved the water while I waited with sand pearls forming in the fat folds of my baby legs. My dog stood guard, but there was nothing near to harm me.
I remember squatting by the break in the wood siding of the house, a mysterious gateway into the shadowy darkness beneath our pier & beam foundation. "Kittalee, kittalee, kittalee," I called, my chubby fingers rubbed out beckoningly. A mama calico had three kittens beneath there, somewhere, and I needed to love them. Gradually, the blind trio opened their eyes and began to creep forth. I could hear them, almost within grasping range, and their mama would nip them by the nape of the neck and pull them back to the safety of her welp. Eventually, though, they became too bold even for her safe-keeping, and they dared to stare at the sunlight where the wood rotted away and come forth to smell the messages brought by this sticky-fingered child. I scooped them up quickly and collected them in toddler arms, petting their heads, rubbing their cheeks, and cuddling them as only a fellow child could. They took to me: black-maned Fuzzy, smooth, inky Lazy, and the calico daughter Spot. We were kits together, growing in the sun on our grassy lawn with wishful dandelion heads, and there was seldom cause to creep back into the shade. The old black dog guarded us like precious jewels, and nothing but wind bent the irises on the hill.
There was a black wooden porch swing where I swung with Daddy on thunderous evenings during storm season, a cozy tv room where I watched the Watergate hearings and listened to Macbeth on record or Bach symphonies with Mama while she worked on her thesis paper, a kitchen that housed sweet Treetop apple juice, graham crackers, and macaroni & cheese, and there was my own little bedroom with the bandana bedspread, welded bookshelves painted red, and a broomstick held on chains & hooks that carried my clothes above the washer & dryer. I had a toybox, hundreds of books, and a rocking chair; and, that was all I needed.
There was also a school where my parents taught and a little farmhouse where I stayed with the kids of other schoolteachers under the watchful eye of Mrs. Alice Brooks. We raced to the mailbox each day and played with the Lite-Brite and the old saddle posted in the hallway. Doors and cabinets were explored, but Mr. Leo Brooks was to be left alone in his tv room, oscillating fan setting his boundaries with a cooled sweep of air. My only nemesis was a green-eyed girl named Misty, and we vied for the affections of a lean, hungry boy named Wayne. He bravely ate everything set in front of him, and it was because of him (and to side-swipe Misty) that I followed him through spoons of stewed spinach and bitter slurps of grapefruit halves. Love and nutrients were found to be equally disappointing, yet essential, and it was a sour-pussed face that gazed back at Misty Keith triumphantly. She beat me soundly in the race to the mailbox every time, though, and I was hard put to de-throne her from the old red tricycle, usually resorting to biting, which only landed me in the timeout chair.
But the day would end with my parents bringing me home and the sun setting on lowing cattle, flourishing fields, a protective dog, and a creaky iron bed with verdant breezes blowing through the paned window, raised with a file in the sill, and shadowy moonlight and sweet magnolia. These memories, feelings, scents and sensations will always be with me, safe like a locket at my chest.
