Talking to you…10/27/21

PARTS AND PIECES

Sabbatical House

There was this house we lived in, and it was the only house we lived in I always felt like a visitor. The sabbatical house, where nothing was really ours. The furry white rug I rolled around on, the oversized bean bags in the basement (I might have popped). The jacuzzi in the sunroom, I swam in a couple times. Once that I remember, but that couldn’t have been all. It was nice, and it gave the home the scent of a hotel pool. There was a hammock out back that sat upon a metal stand. I didn’t visit the backyard of that house very often, and now I wonder why. All the way to my upstair bedroom where I was constantly rearranging the furniture. I tried desperately to feed the tropical fish they left behind in the room I inhabited (using a slew of yellow post it notes telling me exactly what to do), but I’m not sure how long they survived my inexperience and curiosity. I always felt bad about that.

Over the rail on the straight away staircase there was a grandfather clock, I think. And that is where I remember my mom joking around and sending a wad of spit clinging to her lips down as far as she could until it was about to drop and she’d suck it back up just in time. I remember her laugh, I wish I could describe it. Maybe a young womanly chuckle does it some justice. It came from deep inside her, and spread a smile all over my face. I remember her doing silly things like that sometimes.

I remember a boy down the street I played with, Johnny. His older sister was the only babysitter I ever liked. That was the neighborhood I learned being a door to door rock salesperson was not a very viable future. And I’m pretty sure the local university’s football coach might have lived across the street. That is what I was told anyway. I never saw him, and I wouldn’t know if I did. This was the house my brother had lice, I remember my mom finding it in his hair and putting one of them she captured in a little clear plastic jar. Anyway, his head was shaved and everything was washed. I don’t remember moving in or out, it just was, and there it sits with me today as a moment in time. Somedays the memories are enough, and others it bothers me to think about what I might not have kept in my little bag of secrets.