SCHOOL LESSONS

 

    I'm waiting on Timberlake Road for the school bus to rumble up the curve from below and take me to Wheelock Elementary. It's cold, as it always seems to be when waiting for the bus in the morning. There are a couple of other kids, but no parents in sight. Parents are known about, generally speaking, but never really known, not unlike stage hands shifting props around, giving cues, then disappearing again.

The snow is hard and patchy. We draw patterns and miniature roads on the frozen ground with our boots, blow clouds of imaginary cigarette smoke into the air; and though I know envy is a sin, I am secretly envious of the cooler kids' moon boots and silver NASA-inspired jackets. Imagine walking around looking and feeling like an astronaut all day! The closest I will get is drinking Tang for breakfast, that powdery nuclear-orange concoction that the commercials promise is what the astronauts drink in space.

Kindergarten itself was not so bad. In those days, it functioned more or less as a daycare, and as an introduction to the routine, discipline, and socialization of school. We listened to record albums on the boxy metal phonograph, enjoyed story and nap time, and a snack of Graham crackers and grape juice. Already I had some favorite books, with Curious George, and The Pokey Little Puppy at the top of the list.

First grade, at Farnsworth Elementary, presented some new challenges and anxieties, especially for a shy kid who much preferred an interior life of his own design. The school was bigger, and the kids were suddenly louder and more aggressive -- and there were simply more of them, crowding the hallways and classrooms, and the high-fenced yard we used for recess.

A stern-faced teacher by the name of Miss Johnson had straight blonde hair reaching nearly to her waist, and long red fingernails sharp as daggers. I knew this firsthand, as she liked to dig them -- hard -- into the back of my neck for continuing to write my letters with my left hand, which was still viewed by many as incorrect. It might even indicate that you were a bit slow, or backwards. To me, of course, it was the only way. Still is. And as self conscious as I was about some things, this was never one of them. I've been surprised to learn that a couple of people I know started out as lefties, but were bullied enough to make the switch as kids. This would have been unthinkable to me. I was as stubborn as the day is long when I needed to be, and I figured the issue was theirs, not mine.

WHERE THE OLD HOUSE STOOD

 

After your funeral I walked, by memory, to the old house,

as if I might somehow find you lingering there,

as if the years had waited all this time, unchanging.

But the old house, dear brother, was nowhere to be found.

A new one stood in its place -- charming and respectable, freshly

painted, with an impossibly green and manicured lawn.

Nothing you would have recognized. Only the trees

seemed familiar, the old and stately oaks grown older still,

the fan dance of their shadows wavering at my feet.

They would know you, I'm sure, as the lake water would,

as I barely had time to before you were gone.

We are becoming part of the past, dear brother,

a world which we had no idea we were creating as kids;

and it's something I can just about see if I narrow my eyes,

the way a rough sketch hidden beneath a painting

can be seen when held up to a particular kind of light.

Would you mourn this loss with me, I wonder.

Or would you perhaps be grateful, as I am, that no one now

can sleep where we slept, dream where we dreamed;

no one will smoke unfiltered Camels on the slanted roof,

the chilly autumn sunlight looking on in silence.

Those rooms where we laughed, where we fought, talking

long into the night, stand within these walls of words --

every door and window intact, every creak and groan of that

shifting house familiar. It all belongs to us now.

MY GRANDFATHER'S DAY BOOK

 

Worn and dappled with age, it creaks slightly upon opening, must in its creases, a small narrow door leading immediately into the past. The winding blue script within -- all of it in Finnish -- I can only translate in part, a reminder that language, like memory, can only take us so far. What is left out of this ledger -- this list of dates, facts, and figures -- must write its own story elsewhere. There is no listing for the cost of whiskey and cigarettes, no mention of the son drowned on the other side of the world, nor the wife who followed soon after, no price mentioned for the arsenic that took her. The margins are narrow. There is room only for what he is willing to record, that which makes sense and can be easily measured. I don't know where my own days stand, so many squandered with laziness, the stubborn refusal of youth, so many unaccounted for. I know only that their shadow grows long, no matter which direction I stand. If I am found lacking, grandfather, let these words be a start, let my debt be paid in the telling.

MYSTERY LIGHT

 

Sometimes, when I'm in an old building --
marble floors and dark wood smelling of history --
I can't help but press one of the light switches
on the wall, those ancient metal buttons
blackened by the touch of countless fingers,
curious to see if they are still functional.
I did the same as a kid, in church basements
and schools, houses with unfinished attics,
half-expecting someone to storm through the door,
demanding to know who flipped the switch,
the one that controlled the whole neighborhood.
We certainly lived in enough places with wiring
from the turn of the century, lights flickering,
unsure if they wanted to work or not;
some you'd have to flip three times, rapidly,
to wake, or press with just the right force.
Not surprisingly, more than one of those houses
burned to the ground after we had left.
These days -- so many years turned to shadow
in my periphery -- I can't help but wonder,
against my own reason, if I'm turning on the light
in some distant room of the past, my brother
blowing ribbons of cigarette smoke, balanced on
the narrow window ledge, my older sister
curling her hair for a date, telling another corny joke.
There are rooms I would not want to enter --
some known, some forever closed -- but I'd take
my chances to see those faces lit up again.