I’m mapping a year of recovery from a traumatic injury. The last several posts have curved beyond the experience of last year circling around to meet another time and place. Shortly after the injury, facing a long recovery period, I became aware that my inner nineteen-year-old had an experience that she wanted to share. I began taking the time to listen to her. Why? Because she’d gotten stuck. She had been frozen in time, kinda like Otzi the Iceman. She’d gotten plowed under and buried. Not seen or heard. 

On her behalf; and in thanks for her encouraging me all last year, I share her story as she sees fit to tell it along with the 3 gifts that she received. She wanted to be sure I would remember.

Great is the soul and plain.
It is no flatterer, it is no follower,
It never appeals from itself.
It always believes in itself …
I am born into the great, the universal mind.
I, the imperfect, adore my own perfect …
more and more the surges of everlasting
nature enter into me, and I become
public and human in my regards and actions.
So come I to live thoughts and act with energies 
which are immortal …
with a divine unity.
Emerson

I share her experience to encourage you. There is a part of you that rattles when your well-being is threatened. This rattle is instinctive and bone-deep, it lets you know that something in your core needs your attention.

At the ‘special arrangement,’ house I wake early, dress for breakfast duty, move quietly down the backstairs into the kitchen by 7. I know how to ‘be good’ as mom had advised when she left me. I do my best although I’m mostly numb.

Several weeks after my birthday I take advantage of the optional twelve hours + twelve dollars.  I have one place I can spend a night, minutes away via the city-wide transit train. The gleaming silver commuter train tracks run east and west in the middle of the boulevard. I gaze out a window whenever I hear the cars click-clack-sliding by the front of the house. The familiar sound brings comfort, carrying me back in time.

I have a love affair with trains. The approaching sound of steel wheels sliding along rails reminds me of the top bunk where I fall asleep and wake hours later to the rhythm of the shrill high whistle-whine of the C&O approaching the train yard belching coal-black billowing clouds. How many times did I run as fast as my Keds could carry me, running to meet the train as the wail came closer? I jump up and lean over the bridge wall waving wildly to signal the engineer; ‘Hello!’ Hi! My arms flail like the signal man’s flags, ‘HI!! Where have you been? Where will you go next?’

Sometimes I bolt out the back door, dash past Lucky, fly across the asphalt alley, run down the steep wooden steps into Ma Matis’ backyard, jump muddy water in deep tire ruts and puddles across the dirt service road, lean against the high chain-link fence, straining to see the boxcars being unloaded, switched to other tracks loaded up again. Clouds of coal smoke filter up over the alley; mom shakes flecks of the mine dust off clean bedsheets hanging on the back yard line.

(c) Drozda, The Old Neighborhood, watercolor/Arches, 18 x 24″, 1979

Dad grew up here in the ‘old neighborhood’. Dad’s sister, Uncle Paul and my cousins live through the wall on the other side of the narrow duplex. Mom has coffee with Aunt Marge in the morning. If we need mom we climb into the bathtub; tap-tap-tap on the wall. Mom’s voice comes through the wall, ‘What do you need?’ Mouth up against the tile we reply.

In the backyard dad nails boards in the small garage. Lucky lives in his doghouse under the nectarine tree. I gather bits and pieces of wood along with sticks and leaves. I build curbside dams diverting the flow of rain running downhill toward the playground.

where the alley house once sat

Fenwick Alley is my magical place. There’s a wooden cart pulled by a pony that comes down the alley, the man sitting on the high cart bench calls, “PAPER! RAGS! PAPER! RAGS!” There’s the man who wears a navy blue suit sitting on our back step selling door to door from his Fuller Brush briefcase. I stare at the large safety pin that holds the folds of the empty left sleeve. The sleeve hangs limp and casual as though not having an arm is the most natural thing in the world. There is the muni light plant watchman smoking a cigarette on the tiny balcony leaning back balanced on his wooden desk chair overlooking the end of the alley by the playground. He puffs while he watches, calling out when he sees us kids doing what we’d better not.

Mom wants to get us out of this place. I’m the second of her four little girls and there’s a baby on the way. She wants to be away from the busy oneway-two lane road out front. She doesn’t want to have to drive by the stockyard holding pens around the bend, seeing the cows and pigs stand without moving in mud pens waiting their turn. She can’t stand the crisscrossing rails constantly busy with boxcars leaving under the arching concrete bridges; bridges that dad’s dad helped build.

I’m an explorer. I bounce down the alleyways, arms flapping, mimicking the pigeon flocks swooping overhead before coming home to their roosts in the tiny backyards along the side alley. When the watchman is off the balcony I throw stones into the tall grass along the border of the playground; I might be lucky and hit a hobo resting after he’s jumped, undetected, off a boxcar.

I can duck, dive and scramble; there’s a big empty house near the playground, white curtains blow out the front porch window that I take a dare and climb through. There’s the abandoned coal company office inside an old rail car high up on the trestle bridge overlooking the switching yards. I push past the half-open steel door collecting empty notepads strewn across the floor, blown about by winds whipping through the smashed glass windows. I scoop up yellow pencils inscribed with Rose Coal Company. I pretend to be an artist. On the small sheets of paper, I draw/write address numbers from the mailboxes attached to the fronts of the houses up and down the alley.

Mom takes action. She finds and buys a house in a nearby suburb. Only after the papers are ready to be signed does she tell dad. That’s how he finds out that we’re moving. I’m 10 years old in fourth grade at Orchard Elementary. Mr. Parobec is my young handsome teacher. I’m captivated by his travels as a missionary in India. He offers up images of worlds breathtaking and mind-bending. I see new and different things through his stories that expand my view of what’s awful and also of what’s possible.

The move takes place halfway through the school year. Lucky goes to live with grandma and grandpa. I’m too young to understand a broken heart.

I dress in my best. The grey wool-blend skirt (zipper won’t close over my six-month pregnant belly) needs the addition of a large mohair sweater. I wrap myself in the winter coat that I had on layaway last fall.

Dad was a seasonal carpenter with a union work ethic. At the new Danish Modern dinner table, he griped about the ‘scabs’. He declared boldly,  “Never accept a hand-out! Never go on the dole!” In the new neighborhood, he tells me to ‘make myself useful’ help the neighbors, rake leaves, shovel snow, keep shoveling, keep going, keep helping. I enjoy being outdoors, sometimes a neighbor gives me a hot chocolate, some give me a dime. I learn to wash and curl the next-door neighbors’ hair on Saturday mornings. I collect my coins in the cardboard books from the Christmas Club at the bank. Filling all the spaces in the folder with nickles, dimes and quarters is a great game. Dad’s union boss hired me, fifty cents, to draw cartoons for the newsletter. I feel good when I see my drawings in mimeograph print. I start at John Muir Elementary. Mom can tell. I’m sad and confused.

One day mom raps on the heating vent that runs from the basement through the kitchen ending in my bedroom in the attic. Her voice carries up the hollow shaft asking me to help carry groceries. I balk wanting to stay in the back of my closet under the eaves where I spend time alone with my drawing books. I tell her after she says that I’ve missed a bag, that there is nothing left but she sends me out to the driveway to look again, saying that something may have fallen. I open the backdoor and peer into the dark space under the driver’s seat. Two dark eyes look back at me. Mom had gone grocery shopping and then she stopped at the APL (animal protective league) bringing me a present; a black and white fluff of a pup. Tippy and I explore the creekbeds and rabbit trails in John Muir Woods. Dad’s scavenged boards become ladders and bridges, jumps and hurdles. I train Tippy in the backyard.

At twelve, I find my first job. I walk two giant collie dogs that wander freely about the new pet store at the corner. The owner invites me to unpack cartons of collars, leashes, and chew toys. I clean the cages of parakeets, canaries, mice, hamsters, Guinea pigs, rabbits, and lizards. Smells of cedar wood shavings, animal and bird dander, humid air up my nose passing the fish tanks all thrill me. I look forward to brushing the dogs, attaching their leather leads and guiding them out the door where they sniff telephone poles and tree lawns. I refuse the money. I love being in this exotic world.

I’ve been having sex for two years with a very responsible guy. When he first asked mom if he could take me out I was thirteen and I ran to hide in the basement with my pet rabbit.  Mom insisted, “Don’t be so shy, he’s such a nice boy.” He was the neighborhood paperboy, now he repairs cars, soon he’d be stocking grocery shelves at night. He drives. Mom says, “He just wants to take you to play Putt-Putt.” At fifteen I begin working after school at the dress shop in the mall. I help put outfits together, ‘That looks great on you.’ ‘Let’s try the next size up.” I have an employee discount + layaway = cool clothes for me. I buy The Beetles album and my guy says that’s not a good idea. Neither are those stretch pants. Take them both back. I don’t follow directions. 

At the back door of the special arrangement house, I pull on my fleece-lined ankle-high black suede boots, wrap my butter-soft camel coat with the fleece lining tightly around me, holding it close as I make my way down the slate sidewalk. Breathing deeply; savoring fresh air I make my way to the platform two blocks away.

The train door slides shut as I settle into my seat, so excited. I’m taking the chance that my artist friends will be home, it’s been months since I’ve seen them at the club listening to music. The commuter car whisks past beautiful homes and massive trees, I smile at my reflection. Twenty minutes later at the bustling University Circle platform, I exit.

My hand on the round metal guard rail I slide my glove down to the bottom of the stair and bundle myself across the narrow path beside the small park. I’m heading for the big blue campus house at the corner. I can smell bread baking as I step onto the back porch. Walking through the back door I take a welcome breath filled with simmering soup aromas as I’m met with the easy smile of textile artist, Patti, and cook extraordinaire, Sandy. They’re preparing lunch together, chopping salad ingredients at the long table flanked by benches.

I’m just in time. It feels natural. I feel normal. We visit easily. Patti shows me her latest project, four-foot-tall fabric dolls that look like exotic members of a beadwork tribe, dressed in long velvet dresses edged with lace encrusted with tiny glass orbs that catch and reflect the light. The doll Patti chooses for me has elastic straps that slip over my stocking feet. I hold the doll close over my bulging belly as I gently twirl and glide around the dining/sewing room to the sound of the Byrd’s, Everybody’s Been Burned Before.