Spilled Lonesomeness

The earliest memories I have are of living in Tennessee with Momma and my brother Paule. Daddy was a young man in the Air Force, serving a remote year in a far away country that we could only see on the map. Korea was a foreign place to my brother and me; we couldn't fathom that there was more to the world than the house we lived in and the dirt road it stood on. He left my Mom with two active, energetic toddlers during the hot sultry days of summer in the year 1965, and didn't make it back home until the same dog days of summer a year later. My brother Paule had turned four the January before Daddy left; I wouldn't turn three until the following November.

Looking back, I cannot fathom what our Mom had to endure. She was young yet, still pretty of face with her ever-smiling Elizabeth Taylor eyes, high cheekbones, and full mouth, her figure still curvaceous despite having given birth to the two of us. I remember thinking she was pretty enough to be a movie star on the black and white television we were so lucky to have. I am sure we aged her that year just by virtue of our being.

We lived in a small clapboard rental house in the middle of a long dirt road that I was sure went on forever. Murphy Drive in Smyrna, Tennessee, was all the world to my brother and me. From our vantage point, short as we were, we could see the ends of the world from our front stoop.

There was no air conditioning back then. Summer days always found the front and back doors open so any wind that stirred might bless us with a cross-breeze through the house. Screen doors now are made of aluminum or metal, with glass panes that slide up or down to hold out the elements while letting in the sun. Ours were warped, whitewashed wooden frame screens, each with a hook latch, the screening itself flimsy from being slammed so many times as we ran in or outside during the summers of the year Daddy was gone.

I couldn't have been more than three when it happened, but in my mind's eye I sometimes think it happened just yesterday. I don't know why this memory has stayed with me, anymore than the others, or why it has been so powerful for me. But it haunts me still, because my child's mind still thinks I made Momma cry even though my adult heart knows that she cried because she was lonely for Daddy, not angry with me.

We were playing hide and seek, my brother and I, but I grew tired of the game and decided to explore some of Momma's stuff in the bathroom. She always had a pretty little tin of powder sitting on the back of the commode. When I was extra good she would let me use a little bit of it after a bath, but only with her help. I wanted to smell the powder this day, because it smelled so good. It was that secret Momma smell, the one a well loved child associates with warmth and love, safety and security. Honeysuckles, maybe, or some other soft floral scent. Sometimes, even now, I get a sense of deja vu when I walk through Dillard's; I smell that scent again and it brings Mom back to me as though I were still a wee thing.

I remember taking the powder to Momma's bedroom and valiantly twisting and turning and pulling at the lid. Little did I know then that my three year old hands weren't made to open such grown-up things; but I tried and tried until finally, the lid popped off, so abruptly that it startled me. Out came the powder puff, fluffy and white and smelling like an angel, down towards the floor where surely it would make a mess and I'd be in trouble. Trying for a save, I inadvertently dropped the now-open tin of powder and made one very sweet-smelling mess all over Momma's wooden floor.

I remember squatting down and trying pick up what I could, brushing the remnants beneath the bed. Most of it had spilled out, but my little hands scooped up what they could and dumped it back in the tin. I thought I was nearly done when Momma walked in to the room. I was caught.

Looking back, she wasn't mad at me; Momma didn't yell or punish me or do anything unkind toward me. I don't know - don't remember - if I helped clean the rest of it up or if she did. I do remember her sending me out of the room. "Go watch cartoons with your brother," she told me. Grateful I didn't get a swat on the behind for my mischief, I remember doing as I was told.

And later still - thirty minutes, an hour, I am unsure what amount of time passed - I remember going back to her room, standing at the open doorway, asking her if she wanted to come watch cartoons with me. Bugs Bunny was on, I wanted to tell her. But instead I found her as she lay cross ways on the bed on her stomach, head cradled in her arms, crying. The powder was gone from the floor, the tin on the nightstand beside the bed. All should have been well - Momma wasn't mad at me and cartoons were on the television - but she lay there crying, a soft keening that I hear in my mind to this day.

It still has a powerful hold on me, this memory. Sometimes the power of it is so strong it washes over me like an old fashioned river baptism, drenching my soul in the sorrow of my mother's tears. It was the sound of loneliness, an emotion I didn't recognize until many years later. Summer was passing none too fast and Momma was lonely for my Dad to come home.

It wasn't until years later that I realized how much my Momma loved my Daddy; back then, however, I just knew that Bugs Bunny couldn't make Momma's eyes stop crying on that hot, sweltering Tennessee afternoon.