YOUR TURN. Roles from Childhood Chapters
In my childhood, I was a spy, a ribbon dancer, an athlete, full of rage.
A top-secret spy awaiting activation. I’d dart unobserved across a freshly mowed lawn to crouch along a rock wall, bend under leafy arms toward a heady carpet of fallen crab apples to “tie my shoe.” Finding new routes to school or the park or friends’, I’d marvel at the spidering outward of these streets to more and more—all the while pulling wisps of conversation and plot from lilac-scented breeze to be secreted in the lined pages of my notebook.
The loser of an adolescent fistfight I didn’t exactly start but didn’t exactly not start, each of us stepping out centuries-honored choreography, practiced so long we needed no direction and thought we were seeing and choosing.
A performer in a youth choral group. For the secular show, we showcased choreography on risers in candy red cotton with pops of white-on-black polka dots delivered by bowtie, scarf, or belt. We tipped hats and kick lined for “New York, New York.” During an ensemble, a solo dancer arched her back, pursued by a spotlight I longed for while the rest of us whisper-crooned, “First when there’s nothing …” and then popped to full voices in sync with the lights at, “What a feeling!” Once, we took our show on the road. After a performance on San Francisco’s Pier 39, a little girl, one hand fluttering toward her mother’s pant leg, extended a dollar to me. Her baby bird mouth opened silently. Her mom finally spoke. “She couldn’t stop talking about your smile.”
A 500-yard swimmer on the high school team. A counter would hold a mini sandwich board with the length number at the end of the pool each time we swimmers neared it. For the finale, my counter plunged 69 in instead of 19. We were rebels, you see. We’d sprawl across cars in the upper lot after practice, lean muscles shaped by hours of strokes through the pool glistening in the sun, pressing cigarettes or joints to our lips.
A pregnant teen flipping burgers at Mickey D’s. I’d moved out of my childhood home midway through my final year of high school and was, by the time two lines on a stick changed everything, living in the “big city” of Salt Lake. Notebook on my widening belly, I’d gaze out our third-story balcony window, searching for wisps of a future I could neither bring into focus nor bear to shape.
The prompt: In my childhood, I was …
Who were you way back when? What were some of the roles you played in your first two decades of traveling around the sun?
Through lists, I excavate. Digging around to unearth, say, “bodies of water I’ve plunged into” or “inanimate objects I’ve befriended,” I happen on a luscious detail, a hidden doorway, a forgotten talisman. I find again the velvety folds of Lake Powell lapping the moonlit dock. And there it is, the moment I overcame my racing heart to slide, arms pumping, into its tantalizing depths and learned that, by doing what I feared, I could summon a silent shriek of thrill that would echo through my cells so I tingled. And ha! The indigo notebook that was my first journal, lined pages bursting with my secrets and observations.
Writers I admire have spoken of daily practices to complement work on larger pieces. I’m embarking on a year of daily lists. I’ll shape and share some, along with the prompt—lest any of you want to join in. For as long as that’s working, “List with Me” will be a recurring feature here.
