PLAY, continued. And my best memory of doing what I wasn’t supposed to be doing at Play…
Last week, I was sitting with my almost 2-year old grandson Brian at breakfast when my eyes landed on the back of a cereal box that my daughter had brought for Brian.
Well, that cereal box brought me back to my own childhood… instantly. Sitting at the breakfast table, reading the back of a cereal box, albeit half asleep. Hearing my Mom scurrying around. Memories of that PLAYFUL time in my life.
Somehow, pickleweed became a major memory that surged back in time. I wrote:
I could see out the window toward the back of our little house to the hill of pickleweed where my friends and I would take cardboard boxes up to the top and then slide down those cascading hills like we were sledding on snow. I was the only kid from New England among my friends in California and the only one lucky enough to have seen and sledded on real snow.
That pickleweed sledding is something that rushed back to me like the rush of pickleweed sledding on a warm, sunshiny California day just from the memories awakened from the back of that cereal box.
I hadn’t thought of pickleweed sledding in a very long time and it’s a fun memory that I’ll now share with my 11 New England grandkids!
Since writing this, a couple’a more memories about pickleweed have come a’visiting, one such memory on the naughty side of childhood.
Ah, good times.
I was 7 or 8 years old.
A big kid, or so I thought.
Big enough to cross our quiet little street and follow the sidewalk to the very steep set of cement stairs that brought you to the next street below. On each side of this set of stairs were fields of pickleweed as far as you could see.
Our neighborhood was a series of hills and streets, each street connected with cement stairs, with safe railings, that cascaded down those hills. At the back of our little, pink stucco house was a small hill, one of the smallest hills in the neighborhood.
I was allowed to sled down this pickleweed hill.
This one hill.
The pickleweed was slippery when stomped on, smashed down, tread upon. It looked kind of like this…
Hills and hills and hills of it.
Like snow to a kid who came from New England.
The great fun was getting a cardboard box, creating from it a sled of sorts, and just S-L-I-D-E down that glorious hill of slippery.
On that one pickleweed hill behind my house.
Across our street to those very steep cement stairs and enormous hills of pickleweed was another story.
The wrong story.
But I did it anyway.
You know that moment when you’re with a couple of California friends with cardboard sleds and the pickleweed hill behind your home just doesn’t seem B-I-G enough?
Yeah, that.
We headed across our quiet little street and followed the sidewalk to the very steep set of cement stairs that would bring us to the next street below. The one where there were hills of pickleweed as far as you could see — straight down.
We did that hill on our sleds of cardboard.
To our screams of terror from the wild which-way, thump-thumping over that virgin pickleweed that had never seen or felt sleds of cardboard. Or kids.
Screams that had the entire neighborhood rushing to the scene.
Mostly Moms.
My Mom, too.
I remember hitting the bottom of that hill. Looking up. Seeing the mostly Moms way way way back up there at the top of those steep cement stairs and hills.
More terrorized by those Moms, MY MOM, than that wild, thumping ride itself.
The walk up those zillion stairs of shame.
The look on my Mom’s face.
The song that hadn’t even yet been written —
Just wait till your father gets, until your father gets,
Wait till your father gets home.
Oh, Lordy.
Those were not the days of…
“Let’s talk about your decision.”
“Do you think you made a bad choice?”
“Can you use your words to explain why you did this?”
No, Lordy, no.
This was more like get in the house and you’re never seeing the light of day again. AND wait ’til your father gets home.
Ditto to my friends.
I remember sitting on my bed in my tiny, tiny bedroom, hearing my Mom going about her day. I don’t remember if I had a clock in that bedroom, but it didn’t matter. I could almost sense when my Dad would be home from the Navy base in San Diego, just a short drive away. I knew he wouldn’t know of this senselessness of mine ’til he walked through the door… the days of no electronic miracles of instant communication and you’d NEVER bother someone at work back then.
I heard the kitchen door open. Our kitchen was right next to my bedroom. I heard my Dad and Mom talking. I waited for long time. Then my bedroom door opened. My Dad was standing there in his khaki uniform. He sat down next to me on my bed.
He didn’t ask me why I did this thing.
He already knew, I guess.
But he did talk about frightening my Mom. How frightened she was. How I could never, ever do something like this again to my Mom.
I had never thought of stuff like that, I guess.
And it not only kept me from doing some very tempting “bad” stuff in my lifetime, but has stuck with me ’til this very moment in time.
I’ve used it on my own kids.
I’m ready to use it on my grandkids, too.
My Dad was a very brilliant man, raised on a farm only to run away at age 17 to join the Navy to see the world.
He told me much later in my life about the heartache of his Mom, my Grandma, when he chose to leave Michigan. This would stay with him, but he taught the lesson to me on that day of cardboard and pickleweed… of how our actions, both good and not so good, impact those around us. Every single action.
All was well.
But for my punishment of not pickleweed sledding for the rest of my life.
Or maybe a couple of weeks. An eternity to a 7 or 8 year old.
I would hear the words, “GO PLAY!” again from my Mom & Dad, uncountable times, and I would pickleweed sled down our backyard hill uncountable times, too; but that shaking and thumping wild memory of what I wasn’t supposed to do way back when has me smiling a little, tiny bit this morning.
Just sayin’!
Love you, Mom & Dad! Thanks for the memories, the love, the childhood, the lessons, the words, “GO PLAY!”… even if I took these words to new levels at times!
