Childhood Memories

Olivia Dresher

One

Everything goes back to 5714 Matilija Avenue
and the San Fernando Valley.
The breezes, the details of clutter and old houses.
The simple, direct miracle of living a life
inside a house, under a tree, in a classroom.
The giant-feeling of faces looking,
the uniqueness of every personality
(even within the sameness-values of the 1950s).
The miracle of my own developing consciousness
taking in the textures and visions of the world.

The unfolding. The way everything spoke to me.
The fears so huge they were tidal waves engulfing me.
The loves so deep they were pools I'd drown in.
The intensity of having no responsibilities but school.
The expectations, the butterflies in my stomach.
The warm air hitting my face
as those butterflies grew and grew.

The clutter of old closets—the mystery of clothes.
Clothes as the past,
as shadows of animated humans.
Old shoes, like old houses.
The clutter of the old corner grocery store:
the darkness before bright modern lighting.
The simple packaging.
The mystique of the sweet things in those packages:
the chocolate cupcakes, in twos.
The pink and white snowballs.
The desire to steal—as taboo as sex.

These memories are flooding back in.
The past returns like a leak in the basement
and the water rushes in.
Memories are leaky places in the mind
where the past enters.
The past floods into the basement of the mind.
It's reaching up to the first floor, second floor.
My whole life is getting flooded by the past.
That's how the past becomes the present—
from those leaks I can't patch up
(while others patch up the leaks in their basements,
and now they have dry, sterile basements).

On the map, I trace my route to Erwin Street School.
The railroad tracks are still there.
The intense memory of tripping over those tracks,
and looking down their path
toward the mystery of space and distance.
The memory of the $5 bill blowing down the tracks
in the Santa Ana winds.
The memory of the alley behind Peter's house,
the alley that blew dust everywhere.
God, to me, was that dusty alley,
where I could always be alone.
But I also loved going back home,
back to the magic of home, in spite of family wars.
Remembering the fascinating contrast
between the inside and the outside,
and yet what a perfect fit that contrast was.
Trees shaded everything,
trees could be seen and heard through every window.
The trees were always speaking.
The wind blowing wildly some nights,
as if night meant the wind blowing.

I trace my route to school
over and over again on the map.
Then I draw out the rooms of the house we lived in
and trace my thoughts from room to room.
The key rooms: the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen.
These were the magic rooms,
as if daily life was magic itself—
the miracle of making food and taking baths
and lying down at night in the dark.
The merging of smells, textures, sounds and thoughts.
I always wanted words to explain, to tell this.
Where are the words to tell it?—I wondered.
Then the music at night
on my father's radio rushed in and said:
these are the words, in the form of music.
And I'd ride the music, always the wild ride of it.
The butterflies, again, fluttering in my stomach:
trapped, longing to go beyond, to taste freedom.
As if freedom meant truth, removing all clothing.
To listen to music was to become naked.
To hear it drifting into my bedroom
from my father's radio in the living room
was as clear and real as hearing the wind
through the fall leaves.
The music became nature.
And I became the trees, the wind, the melodies.
The melodies as haunting as old haunted houses.
The essence-of-things in that merging
of art and nature and childhood.
Yes, everything goes back to 5714 Matilija Avenue.

Two

The family across the street is moving away to Gary, Indiana, and Michael doesn't want to go. They're all packed and waiting in the car, but he refuses to get in. He stands by the curb, runs to the side of the house, disappears for awhile, then reappears on the other side of the house. I watch his mother chase him, and then she picks him up and throws him in the back seat of the car like a piece of luggage.

He starts to cry as he looks out at me through the glass. The car's back window gets foggy from his breath, and tears stream down his face. He pounds on the back window with his fists. I feel helpless, standing there, just five years old. Michael is older by a year or two, but he's crying harder than I've seen anyone cry—ever.

The car begins to pull away. He looks back at me pleadingly now, he feels a panic of helplessness, and I feel helpless just seeing him shadow-like behind the fogged-up window (where I can only make out the outline and gestures of his despair).

Then there's just a trail of dust left behind as the car turns the corner and disappears. I'm standing there, in the middle of the unpaved street, wondering if he's still crying, wondering if he'll cry all the way to Gary, Indiana. I'm standing there watching the dust swirl around me like smoke from an invisible fire. Slowly the dust-smoke disappears and then everything gets very quiet. I listen to the quiet. I keep standing there, not wanting to move, not wanting to break the spell.

* * *

I'm ten years old. I'm sitting on the grass in the backyard of my childhood house underneath the elm trees. It's hot, it's summer in the Valley, and the shade is magical to me—like a church. I have my tablet open in front of me. Thin rays of summer sun penetrate the thick cover of leaves and create leaf-shadows across the blank page of the tablet. I try to outline the shadows with my pencil, not really looking at what I'm doing, but looking at the way I can't really capture these shadows. They shimmer across the page as if to sweetly mock me, and I wonder: how do I trace this dance, how do I capture the feeling of staying cool while sitting under a tree while it's over 100 degrees in the sun, how do I catch these playful shadows as they moodily talk to the white page like ripples on water? Suddenly I don't want to trace/capture the shadows anymore, I want to watch them, it's like hallucinating, it's a vision, and I postpone the pencil-tracing to a tracing in words that will burst open twenty years later.

Three

My little transistor radio—the way it always got sand in it when I'd take it to the beach. The way the music sounded as it played through the little speaker, as if the static was caused by the sand trapped inside.

* * *

The games we'd play: Cowboys, and playing dead, and search-for-the-black-widow-spiders, and doctor, and mean girls, and party.

* * *

The nights we'd sneak out of the house to spy on the neighbors. The way the bushes with the poisonous red berries looked in the moonlight as we tried not to brush up against them.

* * *

The red pogo stick, the red wheelbarrow, the red wagon, my red skirt, my red pen, Roxanna's red hair.

* * *

My third grade teacher—her blue dress and kind voice and white hands.

* * *

WWIII nightmares and the air raid siren tests on Friday mornings at 10:00 a.m.

* * *

The kisses I gave my brother when I was six and he was one, the different kinds of kisses that I had names for, like The Butterfly and The Squish.

* * *

The early days of smog alerts in L.A., the Valley in a haze. My eyes stinging in the afternoon as I watched the clock on the wall at school, waiting for the exact minute when the loud freedom bell would ring so I could walk home.

* * *

Piano lessons: the long walkway up to the front door of my first teacher's house, and the smell of her living room—like an antique store full of roses.

* * *

The day the street around the block flooded. The thrilling feeling that it had become a wild river.

* * *

That morning when Jeff Miller tore up the Valentine I made for him—in front of the whole fifth grade class.

* * *

The boy who stole the jar of lunch money from the teacher's desk, and the day he returned it and cried.

* * *

The science fiction movies at drive-in movie theaters on warm breezy summer nights. The speakers that we put into our car, the way they were always defective (and distorted the sound of the movies).

* * *

White picket fences...walnut trees lining the streets...roosters waking me at dawn...the sound of crickets filling up summer nights through opened windows...Elizabeth Taylor paper dolls...the fake stars on my bedroom ceiling that glowed in the dark...the sound of milk bottles being left at the front door in the early dewy mornings before I had gotten out of bed...

* * *

The haunted house I passed every day when I walked to school. The face I sometimes saw through the front window.

Four

I remember wandering underneath the Santa Monica pier and finding shells and empty bottles and strange sea-life. It was almost as dark as twilight under the pier, and it smelled of dead fish and tar. I remember the sound of the waves as they rolled in and broke against the pillars, and the fierce pull of the water as it went out to form another wave. I'd walk from one side of the pier to the other. Then, at the point where the pier met the dry sand, there were steps that led up to the street. I remember the shop at the end of that road-over-the-sea: it had hundreds of shells embedded in its exterior walls.

* * *

Sometimes my father would take me to Chinatown on Saturdays. I remember wandering into the little shops while holding his hand, and looking up at the cabinets which held the china dolls. I remember I thought that these shops were where the people actually lived, and I wanted to live in a shop too. Outside the stores there was a huge old wishing well, and I dropped pennies into it. I wished intensely. I wished that everything would be okay, for everyone, and that the Russians wouldn't drop The Bomb on us, and that we wouldn't drop it on them.

Five

A memory came to me yesterday as I was walking into the wind. I thought of Marty, a boy from my 5th grade class, the first boy I ever kissed with any kind of romantic thrill and tension.

Marty's best friend dared me to do it, dared me to kiss Marty. He dared me to do it because Marty was the shyest boy in the class, and I was the shyest girl.

Marty had red hair, which was magic to me. His shyness was magic to me, too—as if shyness meant the integrity of secrets kept. I wanted to devour him with kisses, not give him just one kiss. I wanted to kiss and love his shyness, and mine, and then let the kisses magically make the shyness vanish and open up a whole new world.

We were in the vacant lot after shool, just Marty, me, and Marty's only friend. Marty's friend said to me: "I dare you to kiss him; you have just 10 seconds!" I could tell by the look on his face that he never thought I'd do it.

It was a windy day in early fall, and a lot of dust was blowing in my eyes. When a gust seemed to sweep me up, I suddenly kissed Marty firmly yet tenderly on the lips, as if I knew exactly what I was doing, as if I had kissed like that many times before and wasn't improvising at all. Then I kissed him again, and again. I noticed his eyes were closed, so I closed mine too. It was as if he was saying: you can do that again, and again, and again. So I did. His sweet, willing passivity drew out my wildness. It was as if we were both dreaming and didn't know what to make of the dream.

That was the first time I had been "aggressive" with anyone outside of my family. I was thrilled with myself. Afterwards, Marty and his friend let out howls. I'll never forget the way the wind carried the sound of their voices down the street. Then I ran all the way home (2 miles), out of pure excitement. I couldn't wait to replay the incident in slow motion, over and over again, and not tell anyone; I couldn't wait to climb into my bed in the darkness so I could dream about kissing. Most of all, I couldn't wait to feel the secret the three of us would carry to the classroom the next day.