I
hear that it still stands on the corner of Filmore Street,
across
from the railroad tracks--
and
I imagine walking through the cool, dark underpass
and
seeing it there.
A
white house surrounded by peonies and
gladiolas.
Inside,
in spite of cobwebs and cracked linoleum,
I’m
positive the rooms—the nooks and crannies,
still echo with stories.
I
don’t remember if it was my mother or
me
who woke from a nap with the measles
and
vowed never to nap again.
It
couldn’t have been me, my measles came after the war.
But,
I remember trudging up those same narrow stairs
wishing
I had the courage to never nap again.
It
may have been a cousin or an aunt or an uncle
who
had that experience—a story that I
wondered
about while studying the wall paper that was
bordered
with scallops and roses,
willing
myself to stay awake.
But
I believe it was my mother who
crawled
behind
the huge black wood stove to sleep
only
to be pulled out with the mumps.
My
stories, her stories, mixing it up
in
my grandmother’s house.
My mother
and I attended the same elementary school
where
I was teacher’s pet because—
Mrs.
Bonham remembered that my mother was an artist.
I
called her Mrs. Bottom in my first grade ignorance
and
I was allowed to draw in place of math.
My
mother was great at math—I fell behind.
We
had our annual Christmas program
in
the gym of my mother’s old high school.
First-graders
wore pajamas, carried pillows,
and
sang “Up on a Housetop”—while we
anxiously
scanned the elevated indoor track
for
our mother’s faces.
I
wonder, if she thought of me or looked down to the gym
to
memories of her glory days when she was a star
and
was voted ‘best girl athlete of the year.’
She
insisted that I call her Mother,
not
mommy, just as all the grown-ups
called
my grandmother, “Mother Brand.”
My
grandmother’s house was filled with people and conversation,
but
I didn’t think about my mother as a girl
while
I watched and listened at the kitchen table.
I still
remember my own stories --
about
the rhubarb, the pear trees, and the chili peppers.
but
sometimes our stories merge and I can’t tell hers from mine.
She
would never have acknowledged that—she was
the
golden girl; the one who read the whole Trigonometry
book
in one night and aced the final. The girl who could go
one
on one hunting with her brothers—
splitting
a playing card on edge with one shot,
and
nailing a squirrel through the eye.
I,
on the other hand, went through life imagining
and
day-dreaming,
she
wondered how ideas ‘like that’ got
into my head.
In
a house full of her sisters, these were the stories I learned
during
the war.
But
life moved on and storytelling ended, leaving her stories
unfinished
at the kitchen table, in my Grandmother’s house.
Sharon L. Gilbert, Mesa, Arizona
