You are at pediatrics at the Cleveland Clinic Family Health and Surgery Center of Beachwood on Cedar waiting on Carol, Kim and Brennan who is in for his first checkup. You dropped them off in a mid-rain shower and are out at the far end of the lot waiting for their call to pick them up. You’re idea because you didn’t want to walk. You did however, do your thirty minutes of exercise this morning after a take out McD’s Egg McMuffin after taking Owen to day care.
It takes too much stuff in the head to take care of a little kid. I don’t know how we raised one let alone two – always commotion of one kind or another, a diversion, or playtime. I like the little ones but only for about a half hour or so at a time. I was always partial to high school students. They have some command of the language and their presence; their body language, was usually easy to comprehend. The first prerequisite: Are you awake, Ms/Mr Adolescent? That is, are you conscious of where you are? Do you have a mind? If not, find it please, then talk to me. Waking up to “Martha Speaks”, “Curious George” or “Clifford, the Big Red Dog” is not a cup of tea; neither is listening/watching “Thomas” of train engine fame for more than five or ten minutes at a time.
When I was little I was an only child until five. I had picture books and we listened to classical music on the record play and music and the news from the WBNS radio station in Columbus. I’m talking about 1944 through 1947 while living mostly with my mother in the burnt orange double (with a large front porch facing both streets) at the corner of West Park and Knox Street. The house was mostly library quiet (except for the background music) because Mother and I liked it that way. Somewhere along that early way I also developed a fondness for coloring books and had my eight crayons (I think eight). I remember getting really frustrated about how the crayons were too big and did not easily allow me to stay within the lines. Things got better when I was allowed to have crayons with points though I still made mistakes from time to time. The joy was the background music and finishing a picture with all the colors captured within the lines. The joy was turning the pages of a picture book (and later one with words and pictures) from opening the book at the beginning to closing the book at the end. I had a few toys and wooden blocks too. I enjoyed them from the time of taking them out to the time of putting them away. The world was satisfying, organized and mostly quiet except for the background music. Mother sat in the chair reading and I sat on the floor working on something or playing with a toy or two. I allowed Mother her space and she allowed me mine. We ate at the kitchen table and sometimes she read me stories I remember Mother tried to carry on a conversation with me but I rarely knew what to say to people. I didn’t want to bother people with my voice because I rarely had anything worth saying. I remember thinking most daily circumstances were self-evident. I mean if you wanted to read you opened a book. If you had to go to the bathroom you went in and closed the door. If you wanted quiet time you sat in the dark of a closet. I don’t remember wanting or needing much of anything. Life was very satisfying, content and pleasantly quiet.
After the war was over and Dad came home things were not so organized. We bought a car and started driving places rather than walking the two blocks uptown to Dew’s (soda shop), Rexall Drug Store, Walker and Hanover Hardware Store, Brownie’s Meat Market, or the Westerville Library; or three blocks over to Grandma and Popo Schick’s house on East College (my mother’s parents) mostly to talk to Grandma. Then my sister Cathy was born and there was more commotion and less music in the background. Mother was busier than ever and we had to stay at Grandma and Popo Orndorff’s for a time when our house was being built on Minerva Lake Road in Minerva Park some three miles south of Westerville. Dad was either busy at work, mowing the grass, hoeing in the garden, hunting or fishing. Once we moved and bought a television everyone in the neighborhood came in a watched the Friday night fights or my parents had people over to play cards at two or three card tables. We had lost the quiet and organization the war had offered us. That’s pretty much my life until after Cathy was born in 1947 the same year Carol Cook-Hammond was born. It’s funny – I named my grandfathers “Popo” and Owen named me “Papa” – only one vowel off. Owen is not growing up in the quiet. Of course, my sister Cathy did not grow up that way either. Eventually I became accustomed to the new way but time grew into a new world that I was not born into. Later, when I was eight or so and became more consciously aware of the happenings of World War II I realized the world had never been as my world had been at all. It was one of those little jokes life plays on you, and still does from time to time as I near the age of seventy.
You mentioned the above to Carol and Kim as you drove to the house. – Amorella
I wasn’t thinking. Obviously neither of them could to relate to such a quiet and organized early childhood. And to suddenly realize in this context that in 1982 Kim and I spent a half hour almost everyday after day care relaxing by watching music videos on M-TV before Carol started home from school herself. When I come downstairs in the morning Owen greets me with a smile and “Papa!” with the usual next words out, “Choo-choo, iPad”, that is, unless he is currently enthralled with “Martha Speaks”.
You laugh aloud and consider erasing the whole of your morning thoughts, but let this be a reminder, that even alone you don’t feel you have much to say that people don’t already know and consider from time to time.
Well, what is does show is that I don’t really have much to say – but as it stays (embarrassingly for me), at least I am quiet about it so as not to disturb people with important thoughts in their heads.
