What thoughts do come
It is about 2 in the morning and I cannot sleep. I blame the cursed daytime savings thing that has gotten everything around my house out of wack. All clocks are showing different times and I'll be damned if I am going to run around the two stories trying to synchronize them. It is too late anyway. The storm outside is raving: nature's protest to having its elements messed with. I had to convince my two-year old that the thunder was "friendly" and meant no harm, so she would finally settle down and go to sleep. I wish I were able to convince myself for as the minutes drain away (old time or new, the minutes do not change their fluid transient quality), my ability to sleep flows with them and melts away into nothingness. The house creeks all around, as old bones do during the rainy season. The wind hurls against it yet another wave of angry water. For an instant I entertain myself with the illusion that our house does not sit on a modest quarter acre of suburban soil but is in fact perched atop a cliff somewhere in the Northwest or the Northeast, facing the fury of the ocean below it. I yearn for the ocean, for the untamed openness of it, for the way it always makes me feel young in spirit. Alas, if I had the ambition to slip from underneath the covers and tip-toe across the cool planks of wood floor toward the window, I would see orderly rows of red-brick dwellings, much like our own, on a land that is flat and divided into neat squares, like hop-skotch. But I don't get up, I wrap myself tighter into the blankets and turn over on the other side. As in a caleidoscope, my thoughts shift and make yet another pattern.
I start thinking about the people who lived here before us. I know nothing, almost nothing about them, and so I let my imagination fill in the blanks with absurdly wide and bold strokes. 1946, just after the war, and a demobilized soldier carries his young bride over the threshhold of a house that is as new and as fresh as their hopes. Claire. Her name was Claire, that much I remember from our neighbors' stories. They paint the walls, the settle in. They play house. On a sunny Saturday morning, Claire takes special pleasure in dusting their modest possessions, rearranging the crisp starched doilies on the sofa and the side tables. The house in awash in sunlight, its many windows are open to let in the sun and the fresh spring air. From the radio, a popular song is playing. Something very sentimental and full of joie de vivre, as all post-war things are. Claire is humming along, her thin hands gliding over the smooth surfaces, a smile illuminating her face. Claire is pregnant.
The child does not live. He dies a few days after he is born. Jimmy. They named him Jimmy, after his father. Claire sobs over the tiny coffin. The soldier, who saw death daily in its most gross twisted form, who himself killed many to survive, sobs too in an awkward heartbreaking way men do. This pain nothing could have prepared them for.
The little nursery with white eyelet curtains stands closed for many months, as is Claire's heart. Empty and closed, cradling inside it the little boy that was her son for just a few short days.
Over the years, there are other pregnancies, and they do not speak of them as though committing them to common words would somehow bring harm to the tiny creatures swimming inside Claire's spare body. She never carries another baby to full-term. Never again will her eager arms receive a newborn child and bring him to her full waiting breasts. And then, she can no longer conceive.
They grow silent and apart, the soldier and his wife. The house stands solid and confident around them, protecting them from the intruders, harboring within their silent pain. It knows how to keep secrets and its brick and mortar absorb their arguments, their accusations, their tears. Outwardly the house is silent and dignified. Inside, it is silent also much too often. Only the fourth stair from the top creaks as the soldier often creeps down into the kitchen in the middle of the night to take a sip of cheap bourbon. In the summer, he often sits on the back porch stairs and listens to the night sounds. He does not hear Claire's muted sobs upstairs.
Many years later, the little room that never became a nursery becomes Claire's sewing room, its busy cheerful chaos obliterates any memories Claire may have left of the baby boy named Jimmy. The other spare room is always ready for the favorite niece who loves to visit. The soldier, having gotten used to the warm embrace of a bottle, slowly crumbles: his spirit stronger than his body, his love for Claire as she used to be in stark contrast with his indifference toward Claire as she is now. They live together: two human beings sharing the same space, sharing meals in the kitchen to the busy chatter of the radio, sharing the bed upstairs, no longer sharing any dreams or hopes.
When the soldier finally passes, Claire bids him farewell and lowers the flag on the mast in the back yard. She turns back to the house and it hugs her into its folds. She moves the rocking chair that her husband bought for her when she was pregnant with Jimmy into the downstairs family room. She rocks herself to sleep often in it. The upstairs bedrooms grown cold and neglected.
It is the neighbor's boy, Joey, that Claire grows attached to. He is the only soul that is able to coax a smile out of her with his harmless pranks. She is stern with him but they both know it is only for a show.
The last years of her life are a peaceful slumber, and one day she does not wake up from it.
The house is sold and gutted and redone inside and out, but its dignified graceful quality has not been changed. It is alive once again with children's laughter, with hopes for the future, with love.
I can sleep now. Good night...
I start thinking about the people who lived here before us. I know nothing, almost nothing about them, and so I let my imagination fill in the blanks with absurdly wide and bold strokes. 1946, just after the war, and a demobilized soldier carries his young bride over the threshhold of a house that is as new and as fresh as their hopes. Claire. Her name was Claire, that much I remember from our neighbors' stories. They paint the walls, the settle in. They play house. On a sunny Saturday morning, Claire takes special pleasure in dusting their modest possessions, rearranging the crisp starched doilies on the sofa and the side tables. The house in awash in sunlight, its many windows are open to let in the sun and the fresh spring air. From the radio, a popular song is playing. Something very sentimental and full of joie de vivre, as all post-war things are. Claire is humming along, her thin hands gliding over the smooth surfaces, a smile illuminating her face. Claire is pregnant.
The child does not live. He dies a few days after he is born. Jimmy. They named him Jimmy, after his father. Claire sobs over the tiny coffin. The soldier, who saw death daily in its most gross twisted form, who himself killed many to survive, sobs too in an awkward heartbreaking way men do. This pain nothing could have prepared them for.
The little nursery with white eyelet curtains stands closed for many months, as is Claire's heart. Empty and closed, cradling inside it the little boy that was her son for just a few short days.
Over the years, there are other pregnancies, and they do not speak of them as though committing them to common words would somehow bring harm to the tiny creatures swimming inside Claire's spare body. She never carries another baby to full-term. Never again will her eager arms receive a newborn child and bring him to her full waiting breasts. And then, she can no longer conceive.
They grow silent and apart, the soldier and his wife. The house stands solid and confident around them, protecting them from the intruders, harboring within their silent pain. It knows how to keep secrets and its brick and mortar absorb their arguments, their accusations, their tears. Outwardly the house is silent and dignified. Inside, it is silent also much too often. Only the fourth stair from the top creaks as the soldier often creeps down into the kitchen in the middle of the night to take a sip of cheap bourbon. In the summer, he often sits on the back porch stairs and listens to the night sounds. He does not hear Claire's muted sobs upstairs.
Many years later, the little room that never became a nursery becomes Claire's sewing room, its busy cheerful chaos obliterates any memories Claire may have left of the baby boy named Jimmy. The other spare room is always ready for the favorite niece who loves to visit. The soldier, having gotten used to the warm embrace of a bottle, slowly crumbles: his spirit stronger than his body, his love for Claire as she used to be in stark contrast with his indifference toward Claire as she is now. They live together: two human beings sharing the same space, sharing meals in the kitchen to the busy chatter of the radio, sharing the bed upstairs, no longer sharing any dreams or hopes.
When the soldier finally passes, Claire bids him farewell and lowers the flag on the mast in the back yard. She turns back to the house and it hugs her into its folds. She moves the rocking chair that her husband bought for her when she was pregnant with Jimmy into the downstairs family room. She rocks herself to sleep often in it. The upstairs bedrooms grown cold and neglected.
It is the neighbor's boy, Joey, that Claire grows attached to. He is the only soul that is able to coax a smile out of her with his harmless pranks. She is stern with him but they both know it is only for a show.
The last years of her life are a peaceful slumber, and one day she does not wake up from it.
The house is sold and gutted and redone inside and out, but its dignified graceful quality has not been changed. It is alive once again with children's laughter, with hopes for the future, with love.
I can sleep now. Good night...