Child Skies and Cows and Comets

And disappearing into mirrors

I don’t want my regular ceiling. I want an open roof, like the boy in the storybook who brought orange lizards one by one into his room to live under his bed until his is bedroom became a forest, and the roof popped off and through the banana leaves he became aware of the stars. Still plenty of them even as the fear mongers try to blot them out one by one, filling the sky with satellites instead of comets and the lights of the city washing out the darkness with haze. And then the haze seeps into our cribs and crabs and brains until I begin to wonder if I’m pretend or real.

Like the ritual I had as a child in my darkened bathroom, staring into the mirror unblinking and repeating the mantra: Am I Really Here, Am I Really Here? Until my body dissolved and my eyes filled with tears and I had to shake myself back before escape velocity swallowed me up into the nothingness. Then I would see the green blinking light of the smoke detector above me, and the tiles we painted around the sink: three white ducks next to the barn, the old Honda Civic, the flowers made of tiny dots, the landscape in blue glaze, the cows out to pasture. And I’d sit on the counter and put my feet in a sink of warm water, washing each toe with smooth soap to feel something again.

These were the days before my period each month and when it came, I hid the stained underwear under my towel on the rack, where they would never dry. But I was too ashamed to put them in the laundry since it was my father who hung the clothes on the line beside our very public house. So public we didn’t have locks on the door. Anyone was welcome anytime. And when I feared someone might break in, my mother assured me we had nothing to steal. Those people want guns and money and jewelry. We don’t have any of that, she’d say. The most expensive thing we own is our piano.

Sometimes men in trucks with chainsaws did come down the long gravel driveway having spotted the purple blooms of princess trees from the road. They’d ask to cut them down and sell the wood in Asia and pay us, not very handsomely, but my father never agreed.

These were the days we took sleeping bags out to the top of the pasture, near the old well covered by a rotting pallet (don’t get too close!) to watch the meteor showers. Willing our little eyes to stay awake in case of a big one. Waiting waiting. Seeing the constellations one by one appear. And just a few stars forming an ancient picture — a dog, a hunter, a group of sisters in the sky. And waking up wet with summer dew. The slippery swish of the sleeping bag now sticking to our little arms. But happy. I think we were happy. Was I happy then?

I always felt like a voyeur into American culture. I didn’t know Papa Smurf from Baby Smurf. I once got a green hand-me-down Care Bear but felt ashamed that it was a cartoon character and didn’t really like it much anyway. I couldn’t even pretend I knew the songs of Michael Jackson, who I’d get mixed up with Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, and I thought Madonna meant The Mother and Child. Oh Ma Donna, my lady, my beautiful little girl who wondered if she’d ever shave her legs or wear nail polish. Only once sneaking a bit on her toenails perched on that bathroom counter. But regretting it immediately and not knowing how to remove it.

There was a Christian vibe in the house, Mary and her babe at Christmas, crosses on the wall all year round, but artsy ones made by artist friends. But we were quick to tell anyone who asked that we were NOT (in capital letters) Christian homeschoolers. We were the hippie back-to-the-landers with our barefoot neighbors who ate tahini and air popped their popcorn with nutritional yeast and called soy sauce Tamari. And sprinkled Gomasio on salad and ate carob chips instead of chocolate and sesame sticks instead of Cheez-Its or whatever the real American kids ate for snacks.

One afternoon in the chestnut flower spring, the kittens were born. Smelling of the blossoming chestnuts in their droopy thick scent, the kittens were no bigger than mice. Born in a nest of hay beside the big green barrel in the back of the barn where my dad scooped a can of grain each morning and evening with an old coffee can and tossed it in the manger for the mother cow who licked the wooden tray so smooth and never got splinters in her tongue. The three legged stool my father sat on each morning and each evening was also as smooth as a chestnut skin and the very same color. And if I woke up early I could walk down with him under the stars in the cloudless dark.