When I hear scuffling in the ceiling and scratching in the wall, fluttering at the windows and steps out in the hall, Mommy says it’s mice and birds to calm my excitation, but Daddy tells me other things that swell imagination.
There are ghost doors in the attic and temples in the sky that creatures will spring out of to join me by and by. My dad will weave their stories and spread them out for me. He’ll just open up his mouth and that will set them free.
When I think of all the stories, there’s such anticipation that I can feel my heart boom and hear its palpitation. Nighttime is less scary with Mommy or with Nurse, but bedtime without stories is definitely worse.
The prompt words are: temples fluttered ghost door spring mouth weaving stories step boom sky scuffling for Sunday Stills Wordle 541 Illustration by Marloes Hilckman on Unsplash.
Isidro Xilonsochitl led this project to encourage students to decorate the telephone poles in San Juan Cosala. I took a little drive today to try to find some to share with you. Incidently, he is also a wonderful artist, the illustrator for my books and the painter of murals and eleven other works of art in my house. I’m a fan!
I recently found my old diary, pictured above. I was eleven years old when I wrote the entry below.
Dear Diary
August 20, 1958
Dear Diary,
After I got up I started to clean up living room and finished after dinner*. Then I read, played cards and watched t.v. Patti and I just had a fight. She wanted to listen to her radio and I was listening to t.v. or I should say watching it. Anyway, it causes a little static when the t.v. is on too so Patti turned off the t.v. I kept turning it on and she off. Well, finally I shut if off for a while and went up to listen to her radio. She didn’t like that either because I was humming, so she told me to read a book. I wanted to watch one of my favorite programs so I turned on the t.v. She started crying and I can’t bear to see a woman cry so I turned it off and told her for a girl of 15 who thinks she’s a lot older, she sure was a baby sometimes. For that, she hit me with a book hard.
P.S I’m writing the part about our fight outside.
………….
*We called lunch dinner back then.
Love the last line. Ha!!! Sorry, Patti, but this was too funny not to share. She now lets me watch TV whenever I want to plus she pays my land taxes and signs my income taxes for me and performs all sorts of other generous sisterly duties. xooxox
The children are ebullient as Halloween grows near— the day when even scaredy cats put away their fear and dressed as itchy scarecrows with straw stuck in their britches, go to meet with zombies and ghosts and ghouls and witches.
Little tiny mummies wound up in mommy’s sheet naively think they won’t run home at the first witch they meet. When they knock on neighbors’ doors, it is their fondest wish that they’ll be met at once with piles of candy in a dish.
M&M’s or Hershey bars, popcorn balls or Snickers. When their bags get full, they stuff the pockets of their knickers. If any folks procrastinate in answering their door, retaliation calls for soaping windows. Maybe more.
Only Scrooges turn out lights, do not hand out treats,
and when they hear their doorbell ring, sit stubborn in their seats.
So get your candy ready, for night will soon be falling and all your neighbors’ ghoulish kids will for sure be calling!
“What’s all this hoopla over eggs and animals with furry legs?” My father chortled every year, just loud enough for us to hear while we lay scheming in our beds, visions of rabbits in our heads and candy eggs and chocolate, wondering just where and what we’d be hunting in the morning, when, early and with no warning we’d descend the long back stair the earliest that we could dare and set upon the living room in the early morning gloom to satiate that yearly lust. We must have chocolate. We must!
Year after year, we slipped our gaskets seeking to fill up our baskets. Even now, that longing swells when I hear those Easter bells. So many years since I, a seedling, commenced my yearly candy wheedling.
How many days, how many nights did we anticipate delights well into our lower teens of Peeps and eggs and jelly beans. and, best of all, that chocolate rabbit became our yearly Easter habit. Sitting regally on its ass amidst the bright green Easter grass in the baskets overflowing with our coming and our going, searching out that Easter stash of candy, chocolate and cash. A dollar hidden in one nest was the very very best find of the whole Easter season, and in fact it was the reason why Easter Sunday was the best— our favorite of all the rest.
Later, to church, to sing and pray,
remembering just why this day
was celebrated, though I fear that for us, year after year there were more than one or two kids sequestered in a pew who were not thinking of the prayer, but of layer upon layer of goodies that awaited them in baskets filled up to the brim. For, though our hearts were pure and pious, they could not dispel the bias of a child’s rumbling gut yearning for more chocolate!!
Kids say immaturity is not all it’s cracked up to be. First, they have no salary, and as of yet, ice cream’s not free, so they depend on you and me to determine when ice cream will be!
We tell them not to climb that tree and put restrictions on TV. We tell them that they have to pee on potty chairs, not Grandpa’s knee. We tell them they must walk, then see each lurch and fall and laugh with glee.
Imagine notoriety based on what one’s foibles be. Kids’ natural spontaneity— their need to roughhouse, smash and flee is often quashed, you will agree, with all those in authority!
It’s tough to be a kid, you see, given their great temerity. So grant a bit of charity. Recognize the disparity between what we’d like kids to be and their genetic heredity!
I’ll admit, it’s been a while since I walked a crocodile, so my technique is rather rusty and my memory is dusty. Still, I’ll tell you if you sit awhile how not to walk a crocodile!
Don’t walk him through the butcher shop. The butcher will just call a cop. Don’t visit bakeries at all. His roar will cause the cakes to fall. That store where Mother bought her dress? No place to walk your croc, I’d guess.
And though your pet may need some air, it’s best that you don’t take him where small dogs are left out for our viewing just right for crocodile chewing. Dog parks do not work for crocs Find a new place for your walks.
Don’t walk him on your grandma’s floor. She’ll sweep you both right out the door. Don’t take him to your Sunday School. He’s sure to break the Golden Rule. And if you take him to the deli, no saying what ends in his belly.
I’ll share a secret with you now. It is, I really don’t know how to take a crocodile for a walk. All of this has just been talk. And can I guess by your big smile, you do not have a crocodile?
I guess it was the recent sighting of a croc on the beach at night that sent this little ditty rushing into my head this morning. I would love to have someone illustrate this. Anyone want to try? Send a sketch of your vision of the croc in one of the given situations. You can either email it to me or put it on your blog and send me a link! Here’s a photo of the croc that was on the beach near the house I rent. You could see my house in the background if it were light! Photo by Susana Vijaya. (She estimated the croc to be 3 meters long!)
Update: If you’re not ready to leave croc world yet, here’s an oldie but goodie. (Thanks to Marilyn for the memory jog.)
When wind howls like a banshee to fill the dark night air and monsters lurk in closets or in creakings up the stair, when your brother knows they’re out there––these creatures he can’t see, when nightmares wake you up at night and you have to pee but daren’t leave your bed in fear those creatures will come “getcha” (all those night-born monsters that come out at night to fetch ya,) or when sister wets the bed again and seeks a drier nest, for lying on her soggy sheets, she knows she’ll never rest–– it’s times like these when all the kids form a small tribunal and determine that their parents’ bed should be declared communal.
Caught in baby’s neck creases, clinging to Grandpa’s cuff, escaped from Mr. Teddy are these little bits of fluff. These airborne little clumps of fuzz go anywhere they please. They catch in Daddy’s nose hairs, causing him to sneeze. They wind up in the pancakes–an artistic swirl of blue. A few of them are tracked outside under Billy’s shoe. When he climbs onto the school bus, they go along with him, and everywhere that Mommy goes, to grocery store or gym, a piece of Teddy comes along to be left behind somewhere in the wide wide world, but he doesn’t mind. He has so many fluffy parts that he can share a few. And when you come to visit, you can take some home with you!!