childhood.
Maple tree. Cool breeze. Puget Sound. Mt. Rainier. Broadview, Greenwood,
Dayton. Camellia, robin, snapdragon, grass.
I grew up in a colonial style home on the corner of 122nd & Dayton.
My mother grew up in a house on 117th & Evanston, just blocks away.
My brother & I attended the same elementary school that she did.
Broadview Elementary was a huge brick building filled with light streaming
through old glass, oak desks, gleaming varnished mahogany, and pale yellow
tile. I could see Puget Sound & smell the sea air from the playground.
My family lived in that neighborhood from 1927 - 1987.
I developed a fascination with cavemen when I was about three. For my
fifth birthday I received a book, "Early Man," & I spent a lot of time
with it. I also loved fossils & dinosaurs, and Dad stuck little plastic
bugs in modeling clay to show me how fossils were made. I put together
a plastic Neanderthal model & fantasized about living like they did,
in the wilderness.
I was taught that there was no God. On one level, I accepted that. But
my inner self knew different, I craved spirituality. I made up my own belief
system. I believed in magic & spells & chants & magical combinations
of small objects and, above all else, mystery. (I still do.) I recognized
the infinite & mysterious worlds that lived in maple leaves, ants,
& caterpillars, the pith of a twig, mountain ash burls, sidewalk cracks,
the centers of purpled glass doorknobs, faded wallpaper roses, the fibers
of my breakfast placemat. I spent a lot of time alone. I played under our
big maple tree, daydreamed, wrote little poems, stories, & cryptic
notes. I hid small collections of tiny & ordinary objects in crevices
behind loose pieces of wall trim, believing they were imbued with some
sort of magical powers in combination. I wanted to learn secrets, and to
dream/discover the deep mysteries of the world.
When I was five I was in love with Speed Racer & his Mark 5. I wanted
to be Trixie, and I wanted to drive the car.
We took a lot of family road trips, and when I was seven went to live
in West Virginia for nine months. The cross-country trip made a big impression
on me. I still love road trips and will make any excuse to drive.
Mom & Dad collected brightly colored West Virginia glass while we
were there - Rainbow, Blenko. I found old milk glass marbles in the dirt
outside the glass factories near Morgantown. When we came back to Seattle,
the West Virginia glass joined the Mexican glass & pottery Mom &
Dad collected on trips to Mexico before I was born. I love to see light
falling through colored glass, and through trees ~
I loved books, and by age seven I was reading Nancy Drew & other
higher-grade-level books. By the time I was 11 I'd read all the children's
books for my age & above that the bookstore in Freeland had in stock.
From then on we had to special order books for me to read.
One of my favorite books was a paperback volume of poems for children.
It had little color illustrations and included poems by Blake & Keats
& Shelley & Emily Dickinson & others. I still have it. It's
been held together with blue electrical tape since I was ten.
In junior high school art class, we were told to make a clay whistle
in the shape of an animal & to then impress or incise a design into
it. I was fascinated by pigs, and so made a pig-shaped whistle. I liked
it without any added design and wanted to leave it be. The teacher insisted
that I embellish it. I did, and hated it. I still keep the pig to remind
me to be true to my own vision.
