Tripping Along Memory Lane
I went to the grocery store yesterday, and as I was walking along I smelled Louisiana. Specifically, the area near the apartment complex we lived in when we first moved there, while we were waiting for base housing to become available. It was like a time machine, dragging me back to the four-year-old me.
The apartment complex was called Willow Creek, but my mother called it Willow Cricket because of all the bugs. We'd just moved back from Germany, and I don't know whether they don't have the same kinds of bugs or if it was just the proximity of The Swamp, but Willow Cricket was an entirely new experience for me. I'm pretty sure that The Fear was born there. Because bugs? I have The Fear.
I don't remember much of the actual apartment. I do remember The Swamp across the street. I was not allowed anywhere near The Swamp. The Swamp was a place of alligators, bugs, and death to small children, and I was fascinated by it. The light was different there, soft and green and strangely glowy in a dark way. And it had a very distinctive smell that I don't often encounter. Wet vegetation, or course, but more than that. Something I can't describe or pin down. I just knew that The Swamp must be featured in a fairy tale that I hadn't yet read, a place where children were lured by swamp monsters to become prisoners of a wicked witch, but I still wanted very much to explore. I would have been the child who went into the basement in the horror film. I'm sure if I'd ever actually worked up the nerve to go into The Swamp, I'd have taken one step in, seen a bug, and run, screaming for my mother.
Not that Mom would have rushed to save me, I'm sure, even though she was well equipped to do battle. My father worked nights for a while, and he'd come home every morning to find the floor looking shiny and freshly waxed. Bug spray has that effect, apparently. Mom had an industrial-strength, economy-sized can of bug spray that had a straw that stuck into the sprayer, like the cans of air we use to clean out keyboards. The straw shot the spray incredible distances across the room. Every night we'd have an invasion of crickets, and sometimes a roach, and Mom would stand in the doorway to the kitchen with her eyes closed, spraying in what she thought was the general direction of the offending bug. Dad rigged a flyswatter for her with a curtain rod attached to the handle, so after the spraying she'd whack everything she could reach with the Swatter o' Death. If I remember properly, she'd leave the carcasses for my dad to deal with in the morning.
My strongest memory of Willow Cricket is of the preparations for moving out when base housing came available. I remember Mom buying a dish drainer set that came with a sponge on a stick. Mom didn't use that, so she gave it to me and I played with it in the bath. I walked into the bathroom one day when Mom was cleaning for the inspection, and there was my mother, about a million months pregnant with dawnshine, cleaning the toilet. With my sponge. I will never forget the absolute horror I felt. "I wash my face with that!" I am amazed my mother didn't wet herself, laughing at me. She still laughs until she cries when we talk about it. She also still promises me that she'd never used it before, and that she'd planned to throw it away right after. It was just for the inspection. I can't help cringing, even now, when I think about it.
The apartment complex was called Willow Creek, but my mother called it Willow Cricket because of all the bugs. We'd just moved back from Germany, and I don't know whether they don't have the same kinds of bugs or if it was just the proximity of The Swamp, but Willow Cricket was an entirely new experience for me. I'm pretty sure that The Fear was born there. Because bugs? I have The Fear.
I don't remember much of the actual apartment. I do remember The Swamp across the street. I was not allowed anywhere near The Swamp. The Swamp was a place of alligators, bugs, and death to small children, and I was fascinated by it. The light was different there, soft and green and strangely glowy in a dark way. And it had a very distinctive smell that I don't often encounter. Wet vegetation, or course, but more than that. Something I can't describe or pin down. I just knew that The Swamp must be featured in a fairy tale that I hadn't yet read, a place where children were lured by swamp monsters to become prisoners of a wicked witch, but I still wanted very much to explore. I would have been the child who went into the basement in the horror film. I'm sure if I'd ever actually worked up the nerve to go into The Swamp, I'd have taken one step in, seen a bug, and run, screaming for my mother.
Not that Mom would have rushed to save me, I'm sure, even though she was well equipped to do battle. My father worked nights for a while, and he'd come home every morning to find the floor looking shiny and freshly waxed. Bug spray has that effect, apparently. Mom had an industrial-strength, economy-sized can of bug spray that had a straw that stuck into the sprayer, like the cans of air we use to clean out keyboards. The straw shot the spray incredible distances across the room. Every night we'd have an invasion of crickets, and sometimes a roach, and Mom would stand in the doorway to the kitchen with her eyes closed, spraying in what she thought was the general direction of the offending bug. Dad rigged a flyswatter for her with a curtain rod attached to the handle, so after the spraying she'd whack everything she could reach with the Swatter o' Death. If I remember properly, she'd leave the carcasses for my dad to deal with in the morning.
My strongest memory of Willow Cricket is of the preparations for moving out when base housing came available. I remember Mom buying a dish drainer set that came with a sponge on a stick. Mom didn't use that, so she gave it to me and I played with it in the bath. I walked into the bathroom one day when Mom was cleaning for the inspection, and there was my mother, about a million months pregnant with dawnshine, cleaning the toilet. With my sponge. I will never forget the absolute horror I felt. "I wash my face with that!" I am amazed my mother didn't wet herself, laughing at me. She still laughs until she cries when we talk about it. She also still promises me that she'd never used it before, and that she'd planned to throw it away right after. It was just for the inspection. I can't help cringing, even now, when I think about it.