7.18.14 Childhood By The Waiting Dunes and the Forever Sea

     When I was in elementary school, I couldn't understand math at all. It didn't make sense. I couldn't remember it. 
     I remember going up to Miss Moran's desk, sitting in the little chair next to it, being tested on my second grade addition and subtraction.
     She didn't really like me. She really liked Bobby, a little girl with straight blond hair who wore a little cotton shirt and skirt and socks that matched in the same color every day. Miss Moran put her at the front of the line, every day, smiling at her, to hold hands with a boy. We were all to hold hands, a boy with a girl.
     Me? I was shy and confused and insecure and a loner. My first-grade teacher was an older woman, who took great care with me. Miss Moran had no time for that sort of thing.
     When I stood alone on the playground, it irritated her. When I couldn't keep track of my things, or didn't remember the directions she just announced, she rolled her eyes.
     These things happen. They happen all the time. In all situations all over the world. They happen because the teacher's tired. Or the child is difficult. Or it's just the wrong kind of day.
     After she quizzed me on my math that day, I turned to her and confided in her. I'm not sure why I thought it would do any good. I said to her that I could not remember a thing as soon as the quiz was over. Everything just left me.
     She gave me a hard look - and told me to return to my desk. So I did. Nothing in life prepared me to expect any more than this.
     This is in part why it is such a deep and profound and lasting pleasure to become a parent., after a desolate childhood. 

     You get to have good intentions, work hard to learn how to be a good parent, always always be there for your child, empathize, study books, observe others, consult with people, and then try to learn how to relax and just love them. And have a little fun.
     A few years later, it became evident that I couldn't learn math, among other things. That I was articulate and seemed intelligent, but somehow couldn't manage many things.
     Forgotten was the fall down the cellar stairs at age 2, where I was knocked out.
     But eventually I was given a tutor, and dropped off at her house three times a week, to painfully go over mathematics.
     She had a four-year-old with golden ringlets, a cherubic child, while she had misshapen hips, difficulty walking, and was living with her parents.
     We sat at the dining room table, while her mother cared for the child, and she more or less patiently taught me mathematics.
     Her armpits smelled. I remember the way in which she pushed her glasses up her nose, scratching at her skin, but she did manage to teach me math , enough that I could pass each year.

     The house next door to hers was a large one, with a Widows Walk at the very top; three stories, black shutters, columns, somewhat formal front gardens.
     I overheard adults talking about the parents and child who lived there. The child was very ill, and would soon die. She didn't go to school, and she didn't go outside.
     Finally, my fourth grade school year was done. My second year of having math tutoring was over, thank goodness.

My mother packed the five of us into one of those enormous Pontiac station wagons, with toys and towels and lunch and umbrella and blanket, and drove us 20 minutes to the beach club.

     I had four brothers, and she was pregnant with my fifth. We arrived at the beach club gate, one of us hopped out to unlock the lock and open it wide, so the car could drive in. We all grabbed things; I often had a child on my hip, up the path through the dunes we all tromped , through the boiling hot sand, to the crest, where you could see the ocean for miles and miles and miles.
Hummarock, it was called, and it had a cherished place in my heart.
     Holding hands with little boys , complaining of hot feet, we all managed down to the place my mother would select, and helped prop up the umbrella, and settle everything.

 And then down to the water we would run, cooling our burning feet in the frozen water.

     Our mother's orders were that each child had to go all the way in at least once each beach day. When you went into the water, you slowly turned blue. None of us really liked going in the water, but we did, as the waves dragged rocks back-and-forth across your feet.
     My youngest sibling, the seventh, has a memory I have recorded on video somewhere, telling myself and another sibling how they remember being a baby in the portable crib, put down by the water.
     They remember watching the tide slowly come in; and the waves come up under the legs of the bed - withdraw back and then return. 
      As they turned and watched our mother back up on the beach, sitting and laughing with friends. It was simply the way things were.

 But on this day, at the end of the school year, when I would no longer be going to that tutoring house - at least for the summer, nor driving past that mysterious big house, purportedly with the sick child all alone there, who was to die : on this day , that child was at the beach.
     She had short black hair, and she was as pale as the moon. And weakened, but smiling. 
     As her parents held both hands and she walked down toward the frozen water, looking out at the sea, turning to look at the dunes, taking it all in, with pleasure.
     Kindness and sadness surrounding her, as she delighted in her precious moment of being alive.
     We overheard the adults talking about her. I stood on the beach, her age or at least her size. I took in the contrast of our lives. I wondered at what it was like to be her, from the little that I knew.
Did she know she was very ill? I thought probably so. But I would also, if I was not in school, and not allowed outside.

     Did she know she was about to die? I thought she did. Suddenly, they allowed her to go to the beach.

 And she stood there, unsteady and vulnerable and pale, smiling when the small bubbling waters came up to her feet, and she felt the so alive cold, as she sank a bit into the sand. 
     As her parents stood by her, kind and sad and smiling and quiet.

 I stood there on the beach, alone myself, watching her quietly. 
     Wondering what kind and sad and smiling and quiet parents were like. 
     What being a child alone in the family could feel like. What being so weak and vulnerable might be like, day after day.

And then I watched across the vast distance between us - as she had her moment, being allowed to go to the beach, feeling her hair ruffled by the wind; sensing the hot sun upon her skin, standing simply, being just there, with the waiting dunes and the forever sea.