I had a pretty good childhood, and for a while there - at the height of the blogging revolution and personal website - I shared some of the shinier stories from my childhood. These are they.
Snow Days
When I grew up, we owned the neighborhood sledding hill. Kids from far and wide would flock to our back pasture. We'd close the gate to keep the animals near the barn, drag out our sleds, and face the hills.
Our pasture offered a variety of possible paths ranging from the long gentle diagonal toddler-friendly run that no one over the age of six would even consider using to the 45 degree angled craggy slope we called Suicide Hill for the brush, rocky outcrops, and numerous drops.
We weren't supposed to sled down Suicide Hill.
We all talked about it, as if we had done it. Once every few years, the resident alpha teenager would make the attempt to go down Suicide Hill. Magically, each time, the sled would end up to the right of Suicide Hill on the steep, bumpy, smoother run.
Our best sled was the toboggan. Two, three, four, five people would pile on it, creep to the crest of the hill, and let fly. The toboggan went further than any other sled: down the hill, over the wide gulch, and up the minor hill towards the old woodpile that was home for field mice, voles, and other small rodents.
We also had a battered saucer, that still could spin you round and round as you were hurtled towards the bottom of the hill, and my mom's metal runner sled from when she was a girl. Over the years we had assorted plastic sleds, but they never held up to the hurly-burly of a pasture hill.
Many of these sleds offered ... brakes. Brakes! It's sacrilege! You don't brake when you sled! You lean. You cover your eyes. You duck your head. You bail out. You don't brake.
When I was about 10, we had one of those monster storms (several snow people on the front yard, a snow castle, with seats carved out of snow, no school for days, and lots and lots of hot cocoa) that kids dream about. We built snow forts on the hill and had a good old fashioned snowball fight.
We all had the dream of nailing someone with a snowball as they went sledding between our forts, but even when our baser instincts overcame our innate training to be good, it was awfully hard to time the impact of our snowballs in flight when their sleds were in rapid descent.
Once we grew tired of dragging sleds up the hill, arguing over who was going to use what sled, or felt the cold clamminess of winter on the bare skin beneath all of our layers, we'd drag the sleds to the top of the hill, hang them on the fence, lean them against the shed, or abandon them next to the driveway, and head for the kitchen porch.
We'd stomp up the stairs to shake the snow from our boots, and jump up and down on the porch to loosen the snow from our caps, gloves, jackets or pants. My mother or father would come out with the broom and sweep us from head to foot, and we'd begin to shed layers- coats, gloves, hats, sweaters.
We'd head for the area just inside the kitchen door, where our boots and socks and leggings would come off and be scattered on radiators throughout the house or piled into the dryer. We'd get swept again, and step over to the kitchen table with towels and blankets and new, dry clothes, and drink hot chocolate, eat oranges, and play games.
I loved snow days.
My father is a climatologist, and our neighbor dispatched the salt trucks, sand trucks, and plows for VDOT. Our road was always clear, and whenever it seemed there'd be a big storm, the phone'd ring for the news: Would the storm close schools? Would Jimmy be up and dispatching before dawn? Were we going to see any accumulation?
When I got older, my father taught me how to drive in snow and ice, for which I am profoundly greatful. I can remember the first time I did a donut. I was 16, and my friend Kate was stranded at Ash Lawn. I had picked her up and was heading back off Jefferson's mountain to Rte 20, when we just... spun.
It was a perfect 360 degree spin, and no one else was around, so I just drove away.
Later, during the winter of 1996, as I drove home through a fast-falling snowstorm, I saw the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in Winter: a majestic buck, his antlers dark against a purple sky dotted with the white confetti of snow. He stared into my eyes as the does and young deer glided accross the road in front of me.
When they had safely crossed, and the small green car had shown no signs of threat, he suddenly leapt after his clan, and joined them in the woods.
Summer Meant Snap Peas
When I was little, I would walk from the back of the house through the grass and between the trees, one eye peeled for the black snake who lived under the shed but loved the warm summer sun. When I got to the edge of the garden, I'd look down at my bare feet, and than at the red clay and dark loam of the garden. I'd cautiously step out onto the dirt baked dry, and hop and leap my way to the vines of snow peas.
I'd lift up my skirt into a makeshift basket with one hand, and pull off handfuls of snap peas. Then, I would drop some into my skirt, and bend one between my thumb and forefinger until it cracked. I'd wriggle my hand around it, and use my thumb to pry open the curve of the pod.
I'd loosen the peas, digging in deep. I'd spill them down my throat when they were all loosened, and the soft raw summer taste would be so refreshing that I'd have to open another pod, and another.Eventually, I'd hop and leap out of the garden and sometimes, if it was nearby, I'd find the garden hose, and drench the pods in water. Than I'd plop myself down in some sunny spot, the peas soaking my skirt, and munch away. Sometimes I'd devein them, letting the two halves fall apart with their shared peas separating in perfect order. Othertimes, I'd eat them like corn, tasting first the crisp shells, than the softness inside. Afterwords, I'd pull the strings from my teeth.
Boogie On, Bogey Man
Sleep in the Middle of the Bed
For a short period of time when I was seven, I was deathly afraid of the Bogeyman. Except, of course, we called him the Boogieman. When we were sent down for our naps at Mrs. Fretwell's, I often got the big bed in the basement. In the early afternoon, with the curtains closed, that room was dark and shadowy.
Earlier that week, someone had talked about the Boogieman, and how they saw him, and how scary it was, and I had cottoned onto the idea like it was an ice cream sandwich. So I was lying on the bed - in the exact middle, because the Boogieman hid underneath the bed, and he would reach out and over the bed grabbing at what he could. However, he could not reach the middle of the bed from there. I was determined not to sleep.
I drifted off. I couldn't help it. I jerked awake a little while later, and I saw it - him - it. The arm of the Boogieman was standing straight up next to the bed. The Boogieman wears a pinstriped blue suit - impossibly bright, actually. It had to be a starched summer fabric, and the cuffs of his white shirts showed just above the jacket's arm. The Boogieman had white gloves on and thick pudgy hands. There was something menacing and different about his hand, standing up straight in the gloom next to the bed.
I have no idea what happened next. I think I leapt off the bed and cowered near the wall. Why that would save me, I have no idea. Maybe I thought the Boogieman was chained to the bed. Maybe I thought he was afraid for his face to be seen. Whatever the reason, it was clear to me that the Boogieman was probably not going to follow me from there.
I never saw him again.
Years later I realized that the arm of the boogieman was shockingly similar to the arm on my Mickey Mouse plastic disc player. Bright blue and white pinstripes and a big white (four fingered) glove served as the player arm and needle holder.
Sometimes they Melt
When I stepped off the elevator, for a minute, the halls smelled just like crayons - that waxy wonder of a smell just permeated everything.
I can remember being five and wanting desperately to use the skinny crayons. I felt coddled with the big crayons, and was desperate for those thin crayons, delicate in the clenched fist of a child. And the colors! The big crayons came in eight varieties and that was it. Black Brown Blue Red Green Yellow Purple Orange. I wanted more. I thought yellow ochre was the ugliest color in the world, and I still wanted to use it.
Silver! There were silver crayons. And periwinkle! And Burnt Sienna! And Violet! And Flesh that didn't look like anyone's actual flesh color.
I liked the crumbliness of the color, the way it smeared just a little, skipped channels, and wavered. I liked the way a quickly-drawn line looked next to a slow considering line. I wore out the black crayons early, and would snear at the pink - which in those days was NOT "tickle me pink" but just pink, or salmon.
At Easter, I'd draw on eggs - names, motifs, pictures - with crayons and then dip them in dyes, or boiled onion skins, or boiled grass.
I can remember drawing an elaborate picture of Nancy Drew with crayons, and lots of cats. I drew trees and houses and hills, and I drew people. Even after my father got me pastels and really good colored pencils and paints, I would keep going back to the crayons.
Everything about the crayons were alluring - the bright waxy colors, the occasionally offbeat names (I asked my mother once what Sienna was, and she told me a town in Italy and a town in New York. It made no sense to me why these towns would be that color.), the waxy smell that drifts up, the way they melt into a stiff puddle of muddy color when left in the sun.
In a weird twist of life, shortly after my lifepath got shifted from the technical side of the internet to the so-called creative/producer/director side of the fold, I was gifted with a really nice 64 color box by my boss, and series of utterly charming and remarkably well done pictures by his daughters. It was a sign that I was on the right path.
Romanova
May 3, 2000: Peter Kurth points out that Anastasia/Anna Manahan had died several months before Halloween of 1984. So much for my memory! I could have sworn she was still alive when we went trick or treating. So this was wither 1982, or I imagined and made it up out of whole cloth. Weird.
In 1984, I went trick or treating at the home of the woman who claimed to be Anastasia, Imperial Grand Duchess of all the Russias. I was twelve, a little too old to be trick or treating, and she had been committed to a nursing hospital and was deemed mentally unstable several months previously. Her husband, who was as wacky as she was, aided and abetted her in her wackiness, and so was considered unable to care for her.
Melissa lived down the street, and having grown up in the country, I found the allure of trick or treating in the city - in a real neighborhood of real houses, and where yards could be measured in yards - very alluring. I was fully aware that I was a little too old to trick or treat, and so I intended this to be my last and greatest hurrah.
Anastasia and Jack Manahan lived in an house overgrown with bushes, cats, books, and a general clutter. The lights were on throughout the house, the windows and doors were open, and no one seemed to be home. It was the spookiest place I have ever seen.
We crept slowly (so slowly waiting for one of the others to admit how freaked out she was) up the path, and finally reached the door. I looked in and around quickly (hence the overwhelming impression of clutter), and someone said softly, "Trick or Treat," and we barely stopped to wait before we dashed back to the relative safety of the street.
I knew who Anastasia was - or whom she claimed to be. My mother had interviewed her for a magazine when I was little, and I had found her tapes and listened to them about a year earlier. I was fascinated by the story, by the idea - the hope - that someone could survive something so horrible. My mother somewhat believed her (but not as fanatically as Peter Kurth did), and I wanted to, if only that the mythical Anna Anderson would always be undercut by the imperious cranky real thing.
Of course, recent DNA tests have shown that she is most likely that missing Polish factory worker who disappeared a few days before Anna Anderson jumped in the canal, and that's pretty hard to argue against (although Kurth does!). Of course, now all of my questions will never be answered.
Did she knowingly pretend to be Anastasia? Was she merely delusional? Did the explosion in the factory addle her senses? Did she study hard? Is it all a conspiracy? Could her apparent great nephew really be her grandson, and hence, the DNA match makes sense?
Is there a big conspiracy to prevent her recognition as a Romanov? What about the ear match?
I'd really like her to have been the Anastasia. I just can't believe it any more.
The Manahans were well known in Charlottesville - less so for her claims to royalty as to their overwhelming oddness. (Charlottesville proper never quite knows how to handle the truly different.) He used to hitchhike down 20 South to get his property in Keswick when his truck wasn't running.
Many a morning, Kate and I'd pass Jack Manahan dressed in mismatched plaids and stripes and old sweaters trudging along this old country road that was ill-prepared for the modern traffic, much less pedestrians. We never stopped.