waking up as a child

As a child I woke up to sunshine. Even when the weather was rainy and overcast. I woke up to sunshine inside myself. That is part of the magic of childhood. Of my childhood. I woke up with an attitude of boundless possibilities. Of bright prospects. Except the one summer in grade school, when, for some deranged reason, I took a summer school class. How to make wooden puppets. It was taught by the one truly witch-like teacher at Tuttle. Her name is gone from my mind. But the memory of her visage still makes me uneasy. The poor woman was homely and impatient with children. She should not have become an elementary school teacher. She was fitted for a life as a matron at a women's prison. But somewhere along the line someone she trusted must have told her she should be a teacher. So she spent a lifetime intimidating children instead of keeping felons in check. The first morning I woke up that summer, the summer I was supposed to take her class, I experienced a keen sense of dread and dismay. These were foreign emotions to me up until then. Up until then I had gone about doing as I pleased, whether good or bad, and never worrying about the consequences. Good things meant pleasant rewards, or, at least, being left alone. Bad things brought a tongue lashing from my mother, which I accepted as the normal course of events that just had to be waited out like a thunder shower. So that first morning I simply stayed in bed. I had to pee, but I stayed in bed with my eyes squeezed shut. Pretending to be asleep. And mom came up to wake me up. But I wouldn't respond. It lay in bed, stiff as a board. She knew I was faking it. But she wisely decided not to make an issue of it. As a result, I was allowed to oversleep and to miss breakfast. And to miss the puppet making class. And miss the witch teacher. That poor old woman. She was in charge of the Patrol at Tuttle. The kids who got to wear a bright orange vest and wave a bright red flag had the awesome power to stop speeding cars on Como Avenue so kids could cross the street to and from school. Because sixty years ago that job was given to kids – adults had nothing to do with stopping traffic. Kids were allowed to take care of many things by themselves back then. Or maybe just ignored. Adults didn’t think of kids as a valuable resource so much as a nuisance that had to be kept busy so they wouldn’t intrude themselves too much. So dress ‘em up in a vest and give ‘em a flag to wave at traffic. As far as i know no kid was ever mowed down by a Chevy. The witch in winter made us Patrol members hot chocolate. But it was disheartening stuff. Thin and unsweet, with a mucous membrane forming on top of the cup. We accepted the mugs she gave us, then waited for her back to be turned to dump it out in the sink. Strange to say, every classroom at Tuttle had its own sink back then. Why? I guess to wash our hands. And kids used to throw up a lot more at school than they do now. If a kid turned green and raised his or her hand, the teacher gave a nod and the kid ran to the sink and hurled. I did it myself several times that i remember. Afterwards we sat back down at our desk like nothing happened. We weren’t sent to the school nurse or sent home. Kids were always vomiting. Teachers accepted it as part of the job. My mom didn’t worry when i came home from school to tell her i had thrown up. Unless i had stained my shirt. Like i said, kids were expected to share in the hardness and pain of life much sooner back in those wild and wooly days. Or that was my impression. My memory. And memory is always suspect. Don’t forget that. You never remember the truth. You remember a feeling or an emotion. Only inconsequential remembered details are the absolute rock bottom truth. And will be verified when we can “see as we are seen” after the resurrection. When I woke up as a kid I would stare at my bedroom ceiling. At the crack in the ceiling. It looked like the coast of an island. To me. I took myself to that island, that sunny island. Where there were palm trees and coconuts on the shore. Monkeys loping about with their charlie chaplin walk. I floated in the warm salt water until I finally drifted away from land. Then had to run to the bathroom. In the winter i awoke to the insistent clanking of the furnace in the basement. As soon as the thermostat was raised from the overnight 65 degrees to the daytime 72 degrees that behemoth down below shook itself from its torpor. Roaring to life with blazing fuel oil so that all the air vents expanded with the noise of a tray of cheap dinnerware falling on a concrete floor. I listened to that clanking while lying in bed with the covers up to my chin. I wore a pair of my dad’s capacious white socks to bed in winter to keep my feet warm. As the furnace clanked i put myself on a train. Swaying and clanking. Then stopping with a jolt as i got off with a suitcase full of R.C. cola and bags of Old Dutch Onion & Garlic potato chips. Then i’d be hungry enough to come downstairs for breakfast. In summer it was corn flakes. In winter it was cream of wheat. On sundays mom always made waffles. If i couldn’t fill each little hollow square of my waffle with syrup, if mom said ‘that’s enough!’ before each square was full, i refused to eat my waffle. Complaining it was too dry. Sometime i got more syrup. Sometimes i didn’t. But i always drank two big glasses of milk at breakfast. Then it was heave-ho, outside you go! Either to school or to frolic with my friends during summer vacation at Van Cleve Park. So waking up as a kid always meant sunshine to me. Nowadays i wake up twice each night to use the bathroom. Then have to read myself back to sleep. And when i can no longer keep my eyes closed i remember i have six pills to take. Supposed to be on an empty stomach. And don’t forget the vitamin d so your bones don’t get all brittle and start to break when you sneeze. That’s what the doctor said – ‘you’re losing too much calcium.’ he didn’t say my bones would break if i sneezed but he said i should take care not to fall down. He said take vitamin d. Lots of it. Amy buys me gummy vitamin d. Fruit flavored. So i guess i still wake up to sunshine. Because i wake up to her.