My Confinement

Our lives are confined now.  Because of the virus for many now there are fewer places to go, more time at home, fewer social interactions.  My confinement makes me feel like I am eleven years old again.  It is the late seventies and on Saturday morning the entire long day is open before me with so many possibilities.  I have nowhere to go and nothing to do that I do not choose to do as the day unfolds slowly in the rising heat. 

 

I run out the back door passing my mother in her house dress sipping a milky cup of coffee and smoking  a Kent.  Her presence in the house, cleaning, cooking, smoking cigarettes or watching TV gives me the ballast to roam the town during the day.  Having a place to go home to makes the outings and adventures possible.  But I don’t know this yet.  I am only happy to be heading out into the sun in my shorts and t-shirt, my favorite red high tops and a blue bandana pulling my long brown hair out of my face.  I hop onto my purple Schwinn with the banana top seat and head down to the Boys Club to see who is there.  Maybe we will play softball in the morning with an afternoon practicing flips off of the diving board.  I have the two dollars in my pocket to buy a steak and cheese sub with a coke for lunch.

 

I circle the whole town in my purple banana seat Schwinn, visiting friends on the edges of my known world.  We practice cartwheels in someone’s backyard or pop wheelies on bikes in the middle of the street.  While my baby dolls and stuffed animals have taken a backseat in the closet, I still love to play alone and with friends building forts near the river, running through the sprinkler at the playground, swinging off of the monkey bars.  A group of hippies have gather at the big old oak tree across the street from my house.  They put up a huge rope swing that we use when they aren’t there.  I am still working up the nerve to swing-off from the high branch.  I am old enough to be out of the house all day long but still young enough to be free from the burden of adolescence, puberty, the shame of my female body.  I feel as if I can do anything that I want - paint murals on walls, write poetry, solve hard math problems, sing, be a best friend.  I feel a belonging that won’t feel this strong again until a much later time.

 

I know there is suffering in our country, so much death and illness, the fractures of racial and economic injustice, the failures of government.  Still there is the grace of moments of childlike peace. Now, as then, I rarely go out of the house with money in my pocket circling the neighborhood by foot along the outer edges of town, my known world. I am so happy it is summer and take delight in flowers in bloom, the fragrance of the woods after rain, children running through sprinklers, birdsongs stronger and more melodious than I remember.  So few cars on the street.  And then back home again where mother, grandmother, aunt, father live as a presence in my heart, arguing, hugging, watching TV after dinner, the ballast that makes the known world safe.