Write Club Week 2 - 01.
01. describe your childhood home. give it life on the page. tell about the sugary cereals lined up in the cupboard and the red cans of coke in the fridge. the map wallpaper in the office and the van gogh posters in your room. the trampoline in the backyard and the card games around the kitchen table.
The adolescent tree in the backyard, coupled with the trash storage shed was my favorite part of my childhood home. I climbed that tree, many scraped knees, a few small falls, but never any broken bones inflicted upon myself in the process. It was an easy tree to climb, a trunk split low enough for my 6 year old self to be able to pull myself up. The top of the garbage shelter was concrete, and while not the most comfortable spot ever, I did feel like it was mine, which for a small child can mean make the most awkward spot a paradise.
I used that area for a lot of my childhood play, most of which meant mixing mud and the red berries from the bushes into a culinary masterpiece. Not that I ever ate it, but I liked to pretend that I was one of the guest stars on the Saturday morning talk shows, showing all the viewers how to make this easy, cheap, and delicious casserole, from things almost everyone has in their pantry... or you know, the backyard.
Perhaps what I loved most about the tree was that there were also branches available to create a pulley system, so that I could get my bowls (buckets), my spoons (sticks), herbs (miscellaneous leaves from the various shrubbery) and my cookbook (generally a Strawberry Shortcake coloring book) to my platform with ease. I don't remember where I originally got the rope, but I have a feeling it was pulled off of my sleeping bag (also Strawberry Shortcake) and connected with some frayed shoelaces in order to achieve the length necessary.
There were times though, that my paradise was also my hell. I remember a neighborhood boy figured out that it was my haven, and he decided to have fun with me (or rather, at my expense). He put on a cheap Halloween mask and a cloak and proceeded to be the monster roaming outside my castle, reaching his hands up to try to graze my feet. He snarled ferociously, and at six, I remember being terrified. I believe I cried as I climbed down the tree, he still circling the shelter. I don't remember ever climbing up there again.
Instead, I moved to the front yard, where the divider between the two units of the duplex made a wonderful play window. I could be a bank teller, a fast food clerk at a drive-through, a mother setting the mud pies on the windowsill, the world was open to me again.
When the weather would not cooperate with outside play, our unit of the duplex was small and cozy, with its own beauty. The stairwell leading to the two bedrooms on the second floor was separated from the living room by an open shelving system. I remember the dust with fondness, as it was often a pallet that my mother didn't discover for months.
The closet in my bedroom is very large in my memory. I would get in and play, and feel like even though the rain might be beating down on my cooking school stage, and my drive through window might have to be closed, I still had my own area. I have to wonder how small that closet actually was, though I am afraid of returning to my childhood home, afraid that my memories will be tarnished with the reality.
The adolescent tree in the backyard, coupled with the trash storage shed was my favorite part of my childhood home. I climbed that tree, many scraped knees, a few small falls, but never any broken bones inflicted upon myself in the process. It was an easy tree to climb, a trunk split low enough for my 6 year old self to be able to pull myself up. The top of the garbage shelter was concrete, and while not the most comfortable spot ever, I did feel like it was mine, which for a small child can mean make the most awkward spot a paradise.
I used that area for a lot of my childhood play, most of which meant mixing mud and the red berries from the bushes into a culinary masterpiece. Not that I ever ate it, but I liked to pretend that I was one of the guest stars on the Saturday morning talk shows, showing all the viewers how to make this easy, cheap, and delicious casserole, from things almost everyone has in their pantry... or you know, the backyard.
Perhaps what I loved most about the tree was that there were also branches available to create a pulley system, so that I could get my bowls (buckets), my spoons (sticks), herbs (miscellaneous leaves from the various shrubbery) and my cookbook (generally a Strawberry Shortcake coloring book) to my platform with ease. I don't remember where I originally got the rope, but I have a feeling it was pulled off of my sleeping bag (also Strawberry Shortcake) and connected with some frayed shoelaces in order to achieve the length necessary.
There were times though, that my paradise was also my hell. I remember a neighborhood boy figured out that it was my haven, and he decided to have fun with me (or rather, at my expense). He put on a cheap Halloween mask and a cloak and proceeded to be the monster roaming outside my castle, reaching his hands up to try to graze my feet. He snarled ferociously, and at six, I remember being terrified. I believe I cried as I climbed down the tree, he still circling the shelter. I don't remember ever climbing up there again.
Instead, I moved to the front yard, where the divider between the two units of the duplex made a wonderful play window. I could be a bank teller, a fast food clerk at a drive-through, a mother setting the mud pies on the windowsill, the world was open to me again.
When the weather would not cooperate with outside play, our unit of the duplex was small and cozy, with its own beauty. The stairwell leading to the two bedrooms on the second floor was separated from the living room by an open shelving system. I remember the dust with fondness, as it was often a pallet that my mother didn't discover for months.
The closet in my bedroom is very large in my memory. I would get in and play, and feel like even though the rain might be beating down on my cooking school stage, and my drive through window might have to be closed, I still had my own area. I have to wonder how small that closet actually was, though I am afraid of returning to my childhood home, afraid that my memories will be tarnished with the reality.