Unseasonable Memories
Saturday, January 31st, 2009
Warm sun for the first time in months thawed the ground in the backyard churned by animal paws, and though it was mid-winter, spring was in the air. The January Earth had been turned over black by the dogs running from gate to gate and casting warning barks to whoever or whatever moves along the fenceline. Some girls walked by in summer clothes – one sleeveless and in shorts – as the wind blew her hair to tangles.
I could smell burning leaves. The smell was coming from all directions. Cars passed with windows open so I knew it was not just my own warm blood or wishful thinking children who had determined the day to be warm. Autumn, at times, seemed to be the season at hand rather than spring since the following week forecasted to slip back into freezing temperatures. February usually brings the worst weather, a few more snow falls or ice storms waiting in the clouds, and it all seemed so impossible sitting on the back deck that the sky could become overcast and send ice sheets down to snarl roads and trap people in houses.
The rose bushes swayed on ends that would be clipped clean in a few weeks. Strong train whistles tore through the leave-less trees and wind started to clear away the worthless limbs left dead from the winter. Motorcyles accelerated in the distance, passing cars whooshed, children laughed and a little girl started crying a street over. And the weather and the sounds reminded me of a similar day when I was in fifth grade.
I met some girls on a street a few blocks from mine on a Saturday morning. One of them had an older sister with a car and she drove us to the lake. The intent on the younger sister, Kim, was to grant me face time with Heather G., who was the most beautiful girl at Bethel Elementary School. There were many attractive girls there, though I remember them all to be in different stages of interest and development. Some were still into My Little Pony and horses, still very imaginative and airy, and a few stayed that way going on the become fashion designers and artists.
Heather was advanced, though, not in terms of experience of her appearance, but in the way she carried herself. She was womanly at 10, very knowledgeable of what drove boys or should drive them and intelligent about relationships. I am not sure I remember how or what children see in each other at that age, but it seemed that our interest in each other was rooted in the physical, and in that respect I am sure that I wasn’t much more than boy.
Kim’s sister drove us through the lake’s winding roads overhung with trees, and the shimmering shade and it all felt so secluded and secret. She let us out at the play equipment and almost immediately we were running up a narrow path on a hill. We were about to come down for the first time and while we were stepping around the weeds, Kim told me that Heather wanted to hold my hand.
I was a happy boy, about as bright as the yellow, bowl-cut hair on my head, but I still managed to have a low opinion of myself. I couldn’t see how anyone would want to hold my hand and I was scared that I couldn’t handle what it brought next. I didn’t want to hold Heather’s hand. I was terrified. And we stood there in the glorious sun looking down on the play area my parents had brought me to before I could barely walk, had slid me down the slides, had held my hands up on the monkeybars, had balanced me on the teeter totter and spun me on the merry-go-round, and I felt this new era coming on, a new feeling. Nervousness was always something I felt about the world. I was often afraid of what my father might do to me for misbehaving or being clumsy, which I always managed to be around him. On the hill, there was something happening just as innocent as play time with my parents and yet, I felt darkness in it – and poor timing.
Heather was beautiful, her skin a shade darker than the other girls and her eyes exotic, her hair dark and long with a curl in it, and she deserved a boy her age to hold her hand. She’d find one the next year and the girls really wouldn’t come back to me until three years later when the magnet school had taken the ones they’d been interested in when we started middle school.
That moment passed 20 years ago and I sat there with the sun on me in January of all months and I was back there at the lake park, in the dreary few hours that followed my neglection of this beautiful girl’s offer. We sat on picnic tables and the girls questioned me. They wanted to know what I was scared, why I wouldn’t hold this pretty girl’s hand. The offer was never extended again. The damage was done. Heather was hurt. When she found out, Kim’s sister chastised me. I remember the relief that came when they dropped me off that afternoon and I could walk home in quiet, alone finally, a boy back in his familiar neighborhood and no one to disappoint by myself.
I was glad to hear the summer sounds back again today, but I am also glad that they sometimes disappear and the seasons move on to new ones.
