Memoir: Part One

I've been working on a bit of a memoir..so here's what I have to start! More to come in due time. 

           

            In the first grade, my mother dropped me off at school, swinging her big ol’ Volvo through the corrals which separated the playing children from the parade of parents in idling cars, who solemnly waved goodbye from behind streaked windshields. I clutched a shaggy yellow rope, suspended between two poles to form a walkway, and made my way toward the swirling, giggling, sprinting chaos of my elementary school playground. 

            “Lauren’s here!” Katelyn Dostaler hollered, and I clutched the rope tighter, as if to brace myself for impact. Katelyn was one of the taller girls, and her wide face peered from beneath a home-trimmed bowl-cut, and from behind a pair of thick spectacles which made her eyes appear two-times the normal size. She ran down the walkway toward me, startling a nervous kindergartener along the way. “Hi, Lauren!” Katelyn yelled, as she unceremoniously scooped my limp form into her arms, twisting me about like a rag doll.

            “Hi, Katelyn,” I said in a strangled voice. She rocked me for a moment longer before placing me back on my feet. My hand flung to the bow in my hair, to check it was still there. If I lost my bow with the pencil on it again, my mom would have my head. She’d had to call the bus company to hunt it down last time, not to mention the time I left it at my friend Marie’s house. My mom always said that Marie’s house was a bottomless pit, hungrily awaiting little odds and ends to gulp down, never to be seen again. Not that Marie’s house was messy; it was actually quite clean. Marie’s family just didn’t get so wrapped up in little things like bows or sweatshirts, or even whether their kitchen cabinets were all painted the same shade of red. Luckily, my bow was still present this time, perched jauntily on my freshly-combed hair.

Katelyn grabbed my hand, swallowing it within her clammy palm, and we walked toward a group of young girls who were flapping their arms and careening about the playground, immersed in play.  “Lauren’s here!” one of the girls announced. Kristy Donahue, a gangly girl with a sly smile, wrapped me in a hug, lifting my feet momentarily from the ground. This was a familiar theme: my friends were always excited to see me and were always trying to pick me up. It was among the disadvantages of being so small—that, and not being able to ride the MindEraser at Six Flags. I greeted my motley group of friends, and immediately joined in their game—an old favorite, and one we would not let go of for many years: Baby Birdies. It was a simple game: a family of birds flew about, facing such perils as hunters, disease, and broken wings. The family was led by a most unlikely mother bird, for she was the smallest of the bunch, but she had a valuable tool: the mother bird could let out a piercing whistle, loud enough to call all the birdies back to the nest. Against all odds, that mother bird was me.

My elementary school years, spent within the walls and limited grounds of N.D.I.C. (Notre Dame / Immaculate Conception) school, was a time of imagination and self-discovery.  The school was small and unimpressive, a squat, rectangular brick building on a stretch of blacktop, next door to Notre Dame church, in a small town in Western Massachusetts. But to my young eyes, N.D.I.C. was a breeding ground for adventure. I love to look back on my elementary school years, back to a time when imaginations were embraced, and when the world was only as large as Easthampton, MA. One particular day from my third grade year floats to the surface of my mind, with images vivid and tangible and nearly within reach.

It was a radiant fall day: the sun was out, pressed into a brilliant blue sky, but the air was sharp and crisp, and my friends’ cheeks were stained pink from the whip of autumn wind. My friends and I stood clustered in a secluded spot of the playground, an area partially hidden by a protruding brick wall of our school building. The small nook always smelt of cookie dough and wet French fries due to a vent which breathed the vapors of the cafeteria into the open air. My group of friends had dwindled in size over the years; some girls had stopped playing at recess, and instead walked around in groups of three or four, circling the blacktop like hungry hawks, gossiping and gabbing and whispering behind cupped hands. But I was not ready to give up baby birdies just yet and still had a solid assemblage of friends of a similar mindset.

“We are all gathered here today,” I said that day, standing before my friends, “to decide whether or not we should kick Kristy out of the group.” I glanced sideways at poor Kristy Donahue who stood in the imaginary witness stand, her bottom lip pushed out in a pout. I paused as a gust of wind tore through our little brick crevice, stirring a stream of dried, encrusted leaves into a dusty whirlwind. The leaves tumbled helplessly, their dainty edges scraping faintly on the blacktop. “Kristy, how do you plead?”

 Kristy shrugged, her eyes following the whirling leaves. “I don’t know. I want to stay in the group. I don’t know what I did that was so wrong,” she said, but her squinted eyes and pursed lips indicated otherwise.

“Objection!” cried Ashley Griffith, dramatically bounding to her feet, her hand shooting into the air with a snap of her fingers. Ashley had done her own hair that day; I had never seen so many colorful barrettes tangled in such short hair. “Kristy pushed me down and told me I am bad at singing!” A chorus of similar stories echoed from the rest of the congregation.

“Order! Order!” I yelled, whacking a stick on the ground, unable to bite back a giggle. I had been dying to say that; it was one of the reasons I was so keen on taking Kristy’s case to court. Kristy was always up to no good, and the girls were continuously petitioning to kick her out of our group. “She’s mean!” Ashley would insist, over and over again. And she was right; Kristy was a conniving child with a mean streak. But who was I to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to play with my friends and me? It just didn’t seem fair. A trial was the perfect solution. Plus, one of my favorite episodes of “Rugrats” featured a trial, as the babies investigated who had broken Chuckie’s favorite clown lamp.

The trial that day ended in a compromise. I convinced the others that Kristy should be allowed to remain in our group as long as she was nice to everyone and let other girls be the youngest birdie once in a while. The others agreed, somewhat begrudgingly, and playtime resumed. I knew the Kristy problem was only temporarily resolved; it was only a matter of time before she broke the agreement. But I just could not cast her out. If I were to be a part of this group (and I hated that it had become as formal as that), I would make sure it was one of acceptance, not of rejection. Like Alyssa Fondakowski! No one had wanted to be her friend before because she was so bashful and quiet, but now we all liked playing with her. It wasn’t nice to turn people away. Maybe Kristy would change, at least for a little while. Regardless, I was happy that recess had become simple again.