Moments In Time

College Essay - Descriptive - 2012

The window is open in the bathroom as I'm watching my daughter play with her baby dolls in the bathtub.  Along with Bryleigh's usual pretend conversations between barbies and rubber ducks I am listening to the familiar chatter of frogs and insects, a gift of nostalgia brought to my ears by the cool evening wind gently creeping through the window screen.  I’m wishing every night was this nice. 

            I don’t remember the weather ever being anything but wonderful when I was a child.  In my mind every day the sun shone brightly, the air was warm and sweet with the scent of honey suckles and my mother’s gardenia bush, and the grass was always green.  Sometimes I wonder if my life was actually perfect or if I am simply being fooled and haunted by a child’s perception of reality. 

            Bryleigh’s voice snaps me back into this moment, away from the daydream that has now become so repetitive and yet unchanging.  “Mommy, you be the duck and pretend I’m driving a boat and you want to go home with me to eat pancakes!”  I smile in spite of and because of the absurdness of what she has just asked me to do.  I accept the rubber duck and invitation to play as I wonder how different her view of her life is from mine at her age.  Will she one day look back on her childhood with the same sense of loss and longing that I do when I recall mine?

            The rubber duck smells like the cabbage patch dolls that filled my toy closet when I was a little girl.  My duck has finished her supper of blueberry pancakes and I begin to wash Bryleigh’s hair with the watermelon-scented shampoo her nana bought for her.  She insists she is washing the soap out of her hair by herself and leans back into the water until her ears and half her face are completely submerged.  She is curious about the way her voice sounds to her when underwater, and begins sounding out vowels just to hear how silly they sound. 

            I’m no longer in 2012.  I’m six years old and my sister and I are holding our breath and diving underwater in the swimming pool behind my home.  We are playing a game.  She is saying something to me underwater and I’m attempting to make out her words.  I’m shaking my head because I don’t understand her and burst into giggles, rising above the water before it embodies my lungs. 

            My father knocks on the door of the bathroom and lets me know that supper is ready.  “Okay, Bryleigh,” I tell my daughter, “It’s time to get out.”  I pick the blue towel, still warm from the dryer, from under the sink and wrap Bryleigh in it like a cocoon.  I raise her from the bathtub and begin drying her hair as water drips down her legs to the bathroom floor.  “Don’t slip,” I tell her as she runs through the bathroom door toward her bedroom, chanting “Naked baby” down the hallway. 

            She chooses the soft pajamas with pink monkeys and once she is clothed we make our way to the kitchen.  Supper tonight is sausage, broccoli and rice casserole and corn.  I fix Bryleigh a small plate of everything, knowing she will actually only eat the corn.  I am always surprised by how well she eats her vegetables.  When I was a little girl, my mother cooked a homemade meal every night.  Occasionally she would order pizza, but was sure to include vegetables on the side.  I hated vegetables and when she wasn’t looking I would slip them through the open window behind my chair to our dogs.  She never caught on and I laugh when I tell her this now as an adult. 

            There aren’t many memories of my life as a kid that I can share with my family and laugh.  I still don’t understand why I am the only one of our family of six that is haunted by the seemingly forgotten life of freedom and safety that once was my world.  After my parents divorced and my siblings and I grew up and went our separate ways, talk of the house and the memories born there became almost taboo.  The fact that the house burned and is now untouchable to me makes the dreams that visit and momentarily fulfill my constant, dull yearning for some sort of solidity even that more unreal to me.  Ashes are all that remains of a once beautiful life when everything was still sane.

            My dad has lost his glass of wine for the third time tonight and I’m pacing through the house in search of it.  Once it’s recovered we settle down in the living room to watch tonight’s episode of American Idol.  Bryleigh has finished her homework and is cuddled in the recliner with her papaw.  It’s a quiet night and I’m glad to be here, enjoying the evening with my family.

            I do sometimes think I could enjoy life more if I weren’t so lost in the memories of that old log house.  It’s easy for someone to say to let it go but how easy is it to explain how?  My childhood is now my close but distant friend, the ghost that is my past.  I believe it will become easier to accept my loss once I have found my place in this world and acquired my own family, my own home.  Until then I will embrace the frequent disturbances of memories as my own, the foundation of my soul, and the reminder that nothing remains the same.  I read a line in a book once �" “Nothing of me is mine to keep, other than memory.”

            I tell Bryleigh to choose a book to read before bedtime, and predict correctly that she chooses her favorite �" “Does A Pig Flush?”  By now I have memorized the entire book and absentmindedly flip the pages as she squeals with laughter at photos of pigs sitting on toilets.  She frowns as I turn the last page and begs to stay up longer.  I explain to her that we both have school in the morning, and that Mommy needs her sleep.  I roll over and turn the lamp off and am momentarily blinded by darkness until my eyes adjust and I can make out the silhouettes of furniture in the moonlight.  Somewhere outside frogs and insects are conversing about the night.  I am weary and glad to be resting and I slowly slip into a foggy world of naivety, bedtime stories, and an old log house.