Blog Posts - KathleenPHill.net

Backyard Miracle

7/15/2011

There was some hubbub going on at the creek behind our house. A bunch of neighborhood kids had exposed a long ribbon of thick red clay in the creek bank; they were scooping it out in handfuls.

Really? That’s where clay comes from? Fabulous.

Let me at it.

And this time they did let me at it. There was plenty for everybody -- so much clay I didn’t even object when my little brother and sister joined in.

Marveling over the phenomenon of clay right from the earth and all the things we could make with it, the three of us headed toward home lugging enormous wet globs in our bare arms.

Mom appeared in the window when we were still in the field.

“Look! Look what we got, Mom! It’s clay!” We beamed as if it were gold.

She started shouting, something about our clothes.

I looked down at myself. True, I was filthy, head to toe. Like puppies set loose just back from the groomer, we were all as filthy and as happy as we could get.

But she kept shouting, her voice and then ours (“What? Why?”) filling the neighborhood. It seemed she’d just washed and dressed us specially for some immediate outing. Having pushed us outside for a few minutes so she could get herself ready in peace, she’d -- apparently -- told us to stay clean.

Didn’t she see the clay?

We had to get hosed down in the basement before we could even come upstairs for baths. The neighborhood kids started a rumor that our mother beat us with that hose, but in truth she somehow restrained herself. And I don’t think we ever found out where we were supposed to have gone that day, had we managed it.

All I could think was how I had absolutely no recollection of having been dressed up, being told to stay clean, nothing whatever previous to the discovery of the miracle behind our house.

But Mom: clay.

Enough Already

7/11/2011

So there I was one warm summer Sunday, finally sitting in a church pew, confident that it would be just one of many, many ahead.

You’d think the family I was with would have been my own, but no. My parents were far too busy dealing with all the little Catholic consequences running around the house to take me to confession once a week and mass every Sunday, despite my best persuasive tactics, finely honed as a firstborn. They drew the line at Easter and Christmas, somehow willing to take the risk.

Fortunately for my salvation plan, I’d found another way. I’d love to recall the exact words I used to talk the family across the street into letting me accompany them to the swear-to-God Holy Family Church each week. Had I told them my own family could all, literally, go to hell, but that it was especially important that I get to heaven? Whatever I’d said, I found and co-opted a real “holy family” -- I was set.

Phew.

Except for one thing: it was hot in there. Really, really hot. I’d finally made it but, wait: so this is how it is, seriously? No fans or A/C for a house of worship in those days, kiddo. You want air conditioning in church? What, what’s a little sweltering -- do we have to tell you again what Jesus went through for you? Do you know how hot hell is?

I stared up at the lone, small window high overhead, thinking that if I could just get up there, get some air. I gasped and squirmed and fretted. I looked to my borrowed family, each of them sitting rigid and straight, eyes locked ahead, not even glancing at the window. Surely they were too hot as well and would want to leave, or would at least notice me melting to the pew. Surely they would at least look at me, if I were in trouble ...

But no. As I fainted out flat beside them, one thing was clear: they weren’t going to turn from the sermon for the pushy little girl from across the street. They sat, these regularly churchgoing parents and their oblivious, obedient children, literally unmoved.

My holy new family had just told me to go to hell.

A woman who was there on her own saw the situation. Appalled when even she couldn’t get anybody to break rank, she carried me into the bathroom and brought me around with cold water. I don’t remember her letting them know, or if she did they didn’t care, but she drove me home to my house, and obviously thank God and God bless her for that. I know she gave my mother an earful about it all, and that I was glad to be back, with a newfound appreciation for my profligate family.

For years I took from it only the obvious lesson: going to church or not doesn’t mean anything -- it’s all in who you are and what you do, yadda yadda. And I never went back as a child again.

It was awhile before I saw the experience as something more, as -- ironically -- a spiritual blessing: I wasn’t meant to repeat the same old fear-based lifetime yet again. My little plan was nipped in the bud, and early.

Clearly, even God had seen enough was enough.

Born Free

7/2/2011

We used to go to the Adirondacks in the summer, staying in a rustic, two-story camp that once overlooked Stillwater Reservoir. Practically everything was made out of logs and twigs, and there was always something to do.

Except I’d got it into my head to catch a chipmunk.

My father had miraculously approved this scheme -- with witnesses -- promising that if I could ever catch a chipmunk, I could keep it for a pet. “Just one,” he qualified, as if. Still, I was confident -- both in my chipmunk-capturing abilities and in the belief that, had he tried to go back on his word, he’d never have withstood the barrage of badgering I’d have unleashed.

Never mechanically inclined, I settled on the classic, cartoon-inspired design of upended box with stick and string, and beneath it a pile of tasty bait -- usually graham crackers and marshmallows, always on hand at camp.

And thus I spent hours alone -- every glorious, irreplaceable day -- watching and waiting from behind a tree, stock-still with string in hand. I’d wile away those sunlit hours picturing the ecstatic ride home and our happy-ever-after lives together, my affectionate little chipmunk (who’d surely behave for Show and Tell ...) and me. As chipmunks came and went, effortlessly snatching up morsels and skittering off before the box dropped, I waited on, throwing my summer away on
what must surely be among the most passive of pastimes. This, I’d tell myself, is going to be SO worth it ...

I finally caught one, once. Some chipmunk doubtless slowed by a surfeit of graham crackers. I ran to the box and planted myself on top of it, yelling for assistance -- thereby exhausting the extent of my plan.

All for naught, however. I stared down in shock as the trapped chipmunk, somehow superheroically reconfigured into a virtually paper-thin flatness, squeezed itself, excruciatingly slowly, out from under. Whereupon my would-be woodland pet popped instantly back to its original dimensions and ran off. (“But wait! I promise you’ll be happy!”)

The day I wrote this recollection, I was standing in my garage, hands on my hips, pondering some neglected project or other, when a chipmunk popped its head out of the grass. I stood there as the little daredevil crept closer until he was about five feet away, just inside the open door. Ignoring me, he strode straight to a sunflower seed bag, stuck his face in a hole he’d apparently made earlier, and feasted until his cheeks were fully packed. Then he turned to me, standing full height, his face bulging. Tough-guy-like, he looked me right in the eye for nearly a minute before bolting.

Yeah, yeah, I know better now.

Old Habits

7/1/2011

I must have looked perfectly innocent, sitting on the staircase, using it as my drawing desk, the way you can when you’re little. I’d draw women’s faces, bestowing them with my signature interpretation of the way they all seemed to wear their hair back then: three encircled spirals, like pastries, one on top and one on each side of the head.

But as I drew that day, I determined the plan for my life.

My approach was that of an explorer who’d found herself in alien and possibly hostile territory: having assessed the lay of the land, reviewed my tools at hand and identified available resources, I set forth my resolve.

I would become a nun. I would never sin. I would get through this life swiftly and blamelessly -- I saw no flaw in that plan -- and go to heaven as quickly as possible.

My opinion of anyone who hadn’t figured out and adopted this obvious strategy was, had I known the word then: suckers.

I’d gone through some Catholic indoctrination by then to come to this conclusion, of course. But it wasn’t that I wanted to sit on clouds with angels all day, as people described it, waiting for a nod from God. It was just how I approached everything: you figure out the rules, and you play by them -- or fake it -- the best you can. Pure survival. Pure Popeye.

It was something else besides, and it would be many years before a series of psychics would confirm, as far as such things can be confirmed, my sense that many of my “iconic” lost lifetimes had been spent in religious retreat, if not actual devotion. Apparently this was a seasoned strategy: finding myself incarnate, hieing myself to the nearest temple or abbey. Maybe sometimes I even believed it was a calling.

But by this time I recognized my baser motive full well: it’s what you do here to stay alive.

Makes sense, no? Say you’re trying to get by in the Dark Ages, scratching around alone and undefended. You get yourself in with the religious crowd, and suddenly you’ve got your three squares and a dry place to sleep. A protective degree of status, maybe even authority, among the locals. True you can’t exactly call yourself free, but you do what you have to.

Why should these times require anything less? And so I made my plan.

Old habits really do die hard.

Lucky Me

6/23/2011

For some of us the great thing about grade school was the daily captive audience, with weekends off to develop new material.

The phenomenon of Show and Tell in particular was an opportunity I did my best not to waste.

I brought in my mother’s baton and tried to duplicate her moves as a former majorette. I presented my occasional poem, written in my best imitation of Ogden Nash (“History is a mystery/It makes me so forlorn/After all, why shouldn’t it?/It happened before I was born.” To this day I don’t know whether I actually wrote that, as I long believed, or whether it was a case of cryptomnesia -- inadvertent creative theft. Either way, it really went over). Although it was a classmate who read my epic poem about bowling; I’d refused, not wanting to be exposed in the event someone who’d actually been bowling spoke up correctively.

Then I came upon a treasure trove that was to be my guarantee of perpetual Show and Tell dazzlement. An avid outdoor explorer of limited geographical range, I discovered a patch in our backyard that somehow regularly produced four-leaf clovers -- sometimes five- and even six-leafers!

Toxic waste bed? Caffeinated leprechauns? Who cares -- we’re going to Show and Tell!

I took them to school flattened in books. I carried them in my hand or pocket. I brought them lining the rims of little, water-filled paper cups, trying not to spill on the bus. They never traveled well.

But the reason I finally stopped bringing my miraculous overflow of clovers to Show and Tell was my classmates’ mysteriously waning interest. What didn’t they get?

I could only conclude finally that I was making them sad, since -- it was obvious -- I was going to be the LUCKIEST GIRL EVER.

Attention, Everyone ...

6/18/2011

So many things you don’t get the chance to explain...

We were going about our first-grader business, whatever that was, when our teacher went to the door for a little confab. She let in some other teacher, who set up a record player (like an iPod -- look it up) and started playing marching-band music.

Then in came a whole class of fourth graders. Single-file, they marched the perimeter of our room, pretending to play invisible instruments. When the music stopped, they marched out without a word, followed by their teacher. No one explained it at all.

It was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen.

First of all, fourth graders, pretending? That was our purview -- surely fourth graders were too old for our nonsense. Heck, they were practically grown-ups! Still, they hadn’t looked like they were being forced ...

Second, we’d played real instruments (my specialty was grabbing for the triangle) back in kindergarten. How was it that fourth graders weren’t allowed to have them?

Long after our class had moved on to, again, God-knows-what and then God-knows-something-else, I sat pondering the implications of that strange pseudo-performance.

It must be a matter of money, I thought -- so many kids, the school probably can’t afford an instrument for all of them. Surely we could remedy this, if we all put our heads together ... say, if everybody brought in whatever instruments they had lying around at home ...

Now, I knew we didn’t have any musical instruments lying around at my house. But maybe there was still something I could do to help, to kick this thing off ...

And that’s how I came to waggle my raised hand in the middle of some subject, get the teacher to call on me (she sounded a little impatient, God knows why) and, once I had their attention, volunteer to the whole class:

“I have a baton ...”

When everyone’s laughing at you, with the spluttering teacher standing ready to make some kind of point once the room dies down, you don’t get the chance to explain.

I surmised only many years later that it must have been a lesson on using your imagination.

Still, they really should have explained it.

Teaching Teacher

6/18/2011

One morning (again) back in kindergarten, I stood at the end of the line pondering God-knows-what. Eventually I grew curious about what we were lined up for, but the other kids wouldn’t talk. Suddenly I was the only one left, facing the looming Mrs. Hammond.

“Raise your left hand,” she commanded.

Huh? Now hands have names? Apparently from her expression this was something she’d mentioned before. Oh well, one guess is as good as the other. Tentatively, I lifted the hand that seemed to want to go first.

Wrong. Mrs. Hammond grabbed my other arm and forced it out of sight.

What the--?

Behind her back, she squashed my spread hand into something cold and clammy and held me helplessly in place. (Another jellyfish?)

Turned out to be one of those clay handprint plates you had to spray-paint gold and bring home in those days. To me, however, the moment was the kindergarten equivalent of an alien abduction. I brought the thing home but didn’t, for once, want to talk about it.

Then there was the construction-paper jack-o’-lantern project. Again I had to guess what we were doing at the last second, so mine turned out like Cyclops. Refusing my pleas for another chance -- a mere second piece of construction paper! -- Mrs. Hammond tacked it up on the wall, where it stared out freakishly amid all the appropriately eyed paper pumpkins, ready for Parent-Teacher Night.

I suppose Mrs. Hammond can’t be entirely blamed for all this torture. There was, after all, the time she hushed us and got very serious about a certain slip of paper. We were each to receive one and it was VERY IMPORTANT, we MUST NOT FAIL, to not only take this piece of paper home but to return it, with a parent’s signature, the very next day. Not in two days, not never.

The other kids sat silent, blinking and seemingly stupefied.

Again, was she not seeing what I was seeing? These timid little snivelers barely knew where they were or how to keep from wetting themselves. Whereas I (you know it) could certainly complete the task, clearly it was beyond the rest of them.

Well, I pitied them, even if she didn’t.

Feeling genuine sympathy in the chilling wake of Mrs. Hammond’s hopeless directive, I addressed the room in a deeply patronizing tone.

“Well, TRY ... ”

I can still see Mrs. Hammond’s jaw dropping as she zeroed in on me for a little, ah, discussion.

Embracing Olive

6/15/2011

I am (yam?) of the generation that used to run home after school every day to watch Popeye cartoons. Beyond the short-lived delusion that having had spinach at dinner meant I could defend myself against the bully across the street, the strange world of Popeye held a lasting fascination.

My most enduring image is this: Olive Oyl goes off one night on a sleepwalking tour of a skyscraper construction site. Eyes tight, arms out, oblivious, she strides perilously high among moving girders and swinging wrecking balls. Popeye, awake, follows desperately, trying to protect and save her and suffering multiple disasters along the way.

Yet even as she takes one unconscious step into the void after another, steel beams slide gracefully, unfailingly, under her feet to support her.

Olive Oyl remains perfectly unharmed.

For many years I was that Popeye, desperate to stay alert to dangers, hypervigilant on behalf of my four younger siblings, each seemingly programmed to self-destruct in various and even creative ways, and every new turn of our lives seemingly bent on encouraging it. Thus, in my early days, I was driven to always know -- and enforce if I could -- the one “right” path.

The short version of how that worked out for me is it didn’t.

Codependency 101 aside, I’ve come to think that life at heart is about letting go of Popeye.

And embracing Olive.

Tour of (Kitchen) Duty

6/10/2011

I recall my first tour of the kindergarten room, being led to the child-sized kitchen where it was presumed I, as a girl, would play.

What? Certainly the only fun my mother ever had in the kitchen was talking on the phone. What else have you got?

Pretty soon I’d done the painting thing -- one blue line across the top for the sky, green along the bottom for grass, the spike-rimmed yellow circle above, the box house and stick people. It was time to branch out.

I went straight to where the action was: the huge pile of shoebox-sized cardboard blocks, printed to look like bricks, that never stopped being arranged and rearranged into forts or what-have-you.

Let me at ’em.

But they wouldn’t let me at ’em. The busy little block hoarders pointed out something I’d somehow missed: they were boys, and blocks, so they said, were only for boys.

So that's how you want to play it, eh, boys?

Confident in the support of the beloved new angel who’d been sent from heaven just to spend her days teaching me (oh yeah), I ran across the room. What was her name again? What did that matter? She was my glorious new personal discovery: Teacher. And that’s what I called out as I ran up behind her. “Teacher! Teacher!”

There was a pause, one I instantly learned to look out for. She turned her blond head furiously and bent her reddening face into mine. She actually shouted at me, her voice colder than any I’d yet heard: “My name is NOT ‘Teacher’! My name is Mrs. HAMMOND.”

Well then.

Didn’t she already know about the propensity of kindergartners to wet their pants? I’d seen that right from my first day. She was only lucky in my case.

Eventually, through my persistent wheedling -- still learning to say the right thing, or at least the right name -- the boys on the blocks were forced to accept me. But they were hostile behind the back of my former angel, and I soon gave up.

Where are those little testosterone-testing blockheads now?

Corporate America, presumably, or Hollywood.

Thou Shalt Not Covet ...

6/4/2011

I really can’t blame anyone for how I turned out -- there’s too much evidence of my scowly nature (much modified now) in photographs of my earliest years. Slouching and glaring at my grandmother’s side. Humorlessly clutching my naked rubber doll (I refused all offers to clothe her) with her perfect, frenzied hairdon’t. And if, captured beaming over my new baby-doll carriage, I appeared at all cute, you should know that I invoked the toddler equivalent of “Touch it and die” to anyone who got too close.

I defended my baby-doll carriage because I knew the kind of emotion it could inspire -- as it had the first time I’d seen one, in the backyard next door to my grandparents’. Despite the fact it was being pushed around by the little girl who lived there, I had only one word for the thing once spotted: Mine.

While the adults all around surely expressed their opinions of me and the single word I shouted over and over as I chased and swatted at my rival, I heard only the faint voice coming from my own head. Perhaps something is vaguely amiss here? it whispered, more sense than language. Is “mine” really the right word for this occasion?

I didn’t have time for such ponderings -- she was getting away.

I don’t recall -- and can’t imagine -- the hell I put everybody through from those moments until I had my own baby-doll carriage to claim, in those short years before my multiplying siblings made making such demands impossible. And I don’t even remember who got it for me.

But I bet they drove pretty fast.