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Untitled by Denise Graham December 13, 2006 I remember our house on the corner of Keystone and Robinwood Avenue in Detroit. There was a gaslight in our front yard, with a curved walkway and a hedge that went all the way down the side of the house from the sidewalk to the back fence. It was fun to watch my parents clipping the hedges in the summer, watching the little green leaves on the sidewalk and the grass, sweeping and raking them up. (I don't remember the house in the winter.) The sound of the clippers as Mom or Daddy trimmed those hedges. I heard them discussing how short they had to be because the police said it could create a blind corner that might cause an accident. The side street was not paved, the city would come by every summer with the oil truck and spray oil on the dirt so all the dust didn't fly all over the place. My room was in the back of the house with the bathroom to the left of the door and my parents' room on the right. Looking out of the back window, there was a cherry tree that was fun to climb but it was disappointing because it had all of those cherries that everyone said were good for baking but not very good for eating. They were very sour cherries. I don't remember anyone baking cherry pies. But when there was fruit on the tree there was always someone who would climb over the picket fence to get up in that tree and throw cherries to someone on the ground. Mom or Daddy would go outside and tell them to get down. My swing set was out there too, but you couldn't swing too high as the whole set would tip out of the ground in the front when you swung way up in the back. Once a huge spider came out of the hole and my best friend, Vanessa, who lived across the street, and I were afraid to go back there. Someone put a jar over the hole so the spider could come out into the jar, but couldn't get all the way out. Vanessa and her sister and I all got kittens from the pet store at the mall, Eastland Mall, it's still there, only much, much bigger. My kitten was named Puff, after Puff the Magic Dragon, just like the song, and Vanessa's was named Frisky, like the cat food. Besides the window in my room, I remember the closet, because that was where I put everything that wouldn't go under the bed when I cleaned my room. Mom would never look under the bed or in the closet, just at my bed and the floor. I had a clothes tree in the corner that looked like a giraffe. I don't remember anything else about my room, pictures? nothing else about the room. But, bedtime was always the same when we were at home. Take a bath, put on my pajamas and get in the bed. When I was in the bed, Mom would come in and sit on the side of my bed and sing..."Lay thee down, and good night, with roses bedight(?) Creep into thy bed and pillow thy head", then I would join in and sing the harmony, my Mom is a mezzosoprano, and I sang alto, "Lay thee down now and rest, may thy slumber be blessed". I don't remember how old I was when she started singing a lullaby each night, even now I get tears in my eyes when I think about how that was such an essential part of my life, the end of my day and part of knowing that I was loved. Sometimes my Dad would come in and sing, too. I don't know when she stopped, it just seems like it always was, and when she stopped it was the right time, because I don't remember when she stopped and I don't remember ever feeling like I was too old for her to do it anymore so it must have been the right time, just exactly the right time or I would remember. About the author: I am a make fine jewelry and clothes, enjoy reading mostly science fiction and totally escapist novels, playing golf (high handicap but fun anyway), good wine, good friends and dancing. Any type of dancing will do, salsa, ballroom, beledi, liturgical, R&B, modern and African. Sounds like a personal ad, I guess it is in a way. I have two wonderful adult sons, Kenneth and Matthew and am blessed to still have my parents, Loran and Janetta Graham. Oh, my job, I'm a psychiatrist. | | | |
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