January 29, 2005

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  Funny, I was thinking last night about my colleagues in grad school at Berkeley - son of the head of the asia section of the World Bank, daugher of the head of the Asia Bureau for the late United Press International.  I never thought about it much, being so grateful for being such a long way from Texas and the hurt that was always with me there (though part of that hurt would travel with me forever), but my family, even though they lived at the edge of the city, were, in striking contrast to those of my academic campadres, very much grounded in the land.  It was a long way from that plowed up backyard of mine to Berkeley, and even longer from the top of the hen house, to India and Pakistan.

  
  

  My mother's father left Georgia in a covered wagon, landing up in Oklahoma, then moved on to Arkansas to farm, finally settling in Ft Worth where he became a master carpenter.  I grew up in Ft Worth, in a little ship-lapped house my father and his father built in the 20s.  It had an acre in the back yard that the men plowed and farmed - I remember running through the corn, hiding in it from my little sister, when I was very young, for I always needed to hide from her lest she take who I was away from me - until I was well into grade school, in the late 40's, very early 50's. 

  
  

  There was a hen house way in the back from which I used to collect little brown chicken shit covered eggs.  Later, when the man with the plow and his mules didn't come any more in the spring and eggs arrived from the store in clever cardboard boxes, I'd use the top of the hen house as a refuge, taking an old, raggedy wedding ring quilt one of my greatgrandmothers had made and climbing up on the scratchy shingled roof where I would lie, tilted from the plane of the earth with the slight cant of the roof, in the shade of old oak trees.  There, while my bones and hormones tried to find a new balance and I fought off fear and sorrow and sometimes thought of love, I watched the clouds drift against the blue and change shapes and wondered if there was some way I could change my shape and thereby escape the hurt I felt every day, perhaps become one of those clouds up there and just drift away without having to find a way to run.  The roof of that old hen house was the only place I felt safe enough to dream, covered with my blanket of soft clouds.  

  
  

  My mother never figured out how to climb up there. 

  
  

  pearlbamboo

  
  

  ©2005

  
  

  with thanks to Bert, whose marvelous poem, "Valentine Cloud" called up this memory.    

  
  

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