"Outside"

I vividly remember the first time I ran away from home.  Mom fell asleep on the couch while nursing my brother and I seized the opportunity. The screen door let the early spring breeze in, and I stood on my tip toes to unlatch it.  I listened to the birds and grasshoppers.  I felt damp spring grass under my bare feet.  I yearned to go to the river.  I tempted myself.  I went to the road and longed to cross it.  I leaned over it, testing the order of the universe, or maybe Mom's internal alert siren, if I disobeyed.

I knew my boundary was the road, but it’s not like there were any cars on it.  Nobody would come down that road for hours.  Maybe Mom would sleep for hours too?  She was tired since my brother cried in the night.  Maybe she wouldn't even notice I was gone?  I bounced up and down and finally decided to go for it.  I ran across Lutsch’s field in a joyous rush until I was snatched up and marched back to the house amidst a tirade of verbal abuse.  The heavy wooden door closed off the beauties of spring.

I made things with my wooden blocks and studied the wooden door.  No escape.  I wished Mom would let her guard down.  Wheedle her to let the spring breeze in again.  Suffer through her recitation of my escape to Dad when he came home from work.  He laughed.  We went to the river together.

Same string of events happened the next day.  Mom got louder.  Dad took me to the river.  Same thing the next day.  An extra catch was put on the screen door.  I figured out how to trip it with a block.  The more Mom tried to lock me up inside the more I wanted to escape.  I looked forward to diaper changing time because she couldn't hold my brother down and catch me at the same time.  Dad mostly laughed but told me to stay put.  I mostly didn’t.  Eventually the heavy wooden door was closed all the time until I cooperated.  Mostly.  I think Mom still holds a grudge about all of this.

I was unrepentant then, and I’m unrepentant still.  Outside is good.

My coworkers were talking the other day about how they don’t remember anything before they were 5 or 6.  One said she can only name 1 or 2 of her teachers from her entire education.  That’s amazing to me since I'm pretty sure I can name all of mine.  I found it amazing when I was in first grade and my classmates said pretty much the same thing about not remembering their pasts, and that was even more remarkable to me because then we were talking months having passed, not even years.  I determined that I would remember stuff, and I have.

I don’t really know what the value of remembering all this stuff is, but I’m glad that I do.  Sometimes it results in a blog post or remembering what it feels like to live inside a robust child’s body, and I think that's something we should all spend time thinking about once in a while.

This illustration was for a brochure, obviously on the topic of getting along with animals when they don't understand the boundaries between inside and outside.  I notice I placed the door handle kind of high.  Maybe my inner child will always see doors this way?  I wish I could find the original scratchboard piece but can't.  This is a scan from the actual brochure which isn't that good as it was printed on a rough kind of recycled paper with flecks of bark or something in it.

Happy birthday Mom!  Maybe not the story you would've picked for your birthday, but I gotta admit it makes me smile to think of escaping.

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