The Ash Creek Papers

Sometimes we don’t know what’s goin’ on behind the scenes… what I call “what’s happening in the kitchen.” But I got a quick note from Suzy yesterday… she was responding to my piece, “The Little Boy in the Window”.

She wrote… “your writing style is different in this piece compared to all your other ones. I like it.”

It got me thinking… perhaps it might be fun to share a couple of things that go on in the kitchen.

Much of my writing is flavoured by my personal experiences in growing up. And my subject matter is often triggered by something I have experienced today that in turns triggers a memory… and then it simply a matter of weaving a story, drawing from those memories. The stories are always told in the first person… they are after all, my recollections and expressions of my feelings.

Suzy is right. “The Little Boy in the Window” came from a slightly different angle, although the source for the idea was the same… I got up yesterday morning, and when I hit the air, the cold jolted me… and for whatever reason (God only knows), the memory that flashed in my head was standing in our den on Alston Avenue on a winter’s day and licking the cold glass.

That was it.

I didn’t know if there was really a story there. But I loved the image, the memory.

I decided to describe the image without a story line… just a simple description. I also decided to use the third person… and remove specific personal references… which is why I refer to it as the den, and not our den… why it was his Aunt Bella, and not my Aunt Bella.

I think folks knew that the little boy was me, without having to actually say that. But I wanted to convey, in a small episode, perhaps in a more neutral manner, the way someone experiences both the warmth of the sun and the loneliness of the cold.

I am reminded of Tevye’s Prologue in the Musical Fiddler on a Roof… “A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy.”

I guess I see things pretty much that way, perched precariously on the roof teetering between the warmth and happiness of home, and the strange chill of solitude.

It isn’t easy to express that balance. But the image that my brain conjured up combined the blend I was looking for.

I was 7 when Paul left the house for Union and 9 when Lynn departed for Western College for Women… but I was not without attention… I didn’t have many friends outside of Ian Gordon who lived next door… but Mommie Soph and Bessie were there all the time… Mom, too… her friends, and then there were the relatives… Mommie Soph’s sisters & Mom’s cousins…

And even with this “Gilbert & Sullivan like” cast of characters, I spent a good deal of time in solitary play… apart from folks, I liked being alone, in many ways I preferred being alone… but my enjoyment in being alone was supported by the warmth of knowing that my family was there… that any sadness that I felt (which was not well defined at that time) would soon be replaced by the laughter of our dinner table.

“The Little Boy in the Window” tried to capture those feelings. The Aunt Bella in the piece, was actually my Great Aunt Bella. She was Mommie Soph’s Sister, and she lived around the corner from us at that time. It was truly a rare day when she did not come over for a visit during the afternoon.

I would not have been alone in anticipating her visit, which for me was always a happy time. Our Bedlington Terrier Baa Baa had an uncanny sense of when she would be coming down the hill… and as I waited at the window, tasting the cold, Baa Baa would have come into the den and curled up on one of the three chairs in the room (we also had a long couch). Baa Baa’s objective was to deny Bella access to one of the chairs.

This is true. In our home, dogs had consideration before guests. And it would be Bella who said that if there was reincarnation, she wanted to come back as a dog in the Winston household.

Well… there you go… a peek into my kitchen.

The room was long and thin with windows that covered three full sides. I guess it could be called a sun room although it was referred to as the den… on a winter’s afternoon the path of the sun thru the sky, brought its warming rays and all its glory to that room.

The bare trees that stood before the room would move to the winter wind and created and ever changing sun and shadow pattern in that room.

The boy stood mesmerized… his forehead pressed to the windowpane… to feel the cold against his skin… keeping his face against the glass, he turned slightly to breathe on the window and create a foggy patch, perfect for making a small design. Sort of like carving initials in a tree… but this monogram is fleeting. He watches the initials recede into the cold of the window.

He presses his face to the glass again, to see and hear the limbs bending to the will of the wind… a sharp gust now penetrates the thin pane… and the little boy can not resist tasting the cold, to make it more a part of him.

The cold may fascinate him; but it is the sun that keeps him in the room… that, and to await the sight of his Aunt Bella walking down the hill on Chapel St.

A cold winter’s day would not keep Aunt Bella from making her daily visit. It was something that you could count on… just as you could count on the sun moving thru the sky.