June Birthday

Written June 20th outside my motel in Cranberry Pa on the way to Mich.

I'm glad my birthday is the true beginning of summer. It's always a double celebration, and as a child, it meant freedom of spirit for the next three months. My gifts were always summer gifts: bicycle, pogo stick,stilts, roller skates.
The days were beautifully endless. I resented anything like structure: Vacation Bible School was an insult, a return to prison for a week, a useless fingerpainting, cheesy coloring projects in the moldy church basement week. A summer day should begin with the full rush of joy at the possibilities. A June day was still fresh and green, the smell of climbing roses and iris floating in the open window, the sunlight clear but not brutally hot. I'd stroll out into the yard barefoot, maybe swing up into the maple tree and think or not think as the mood struck. Often Kathy would call up, and we might go together across to the park. The Raisin River was too dirty to step into, but along its banks were roots and moss to make villages for fairy people, and sometimes a tree would fall across the water and make a deliciously dangerous bridge. The other side of the river was an unknown, slightly unsavory neighborhood where we weren't allowed to go, so the sense of risk was heightened. Big black willows were commodious to climb into or even walk along the broad limbs. One day a couple of tough girls with DA haircuts tried to challenge us to a fight. We hurried off home, deferring our mild tomboyishness to their hard core hostility. I saw their pictures in the paper years later as having joined the Army and I feel sorry for any women in their units.
Kathy and I had freedom unknown to today's children. I don't believe there were fewer perverts then, but I guess some atmosphere of restraint still prevailed. From the age of nine we took bike rides for miles outside of town, following the easy grid of the Midwest square miles, fearing only unchained farm dogs. We spent hours in the park, crawling around blackberry bushes on the hillsides and climbing high in the white pines. At night I would remember the limbs swaying in the wind and jump inside myself. We'd get on swings, going higher and higher, working ourselves into a trance. In my yard was a seesaw built by Dad, and we'd sing rounds as we bumped up and down, Kathy's end pulled longer for extra weight, she being skinny and I being stocky. At her house we tried to find where her old cat was buried, then tried to dig to China. Finally she began to be fascinated by clothes and boys and we drifted apart.
Meanwhile, I had the joy of my friend Mary, who lived in the country. Visits to her were not so
spontaneous, but once I was at her place, the possibilities were much greater. We could take off up the lane to the woods with a snack for lunch, maybe even hot dogs to cook over a fire at the shack, though in deep summer the nettles had usually grown so high that the little house was unreachable.But we had the creek. We had to cross it anyway, and once we were wading, it was only a matter of time before we "fell" in, and then we might as well slide down the muddy banks of the creek. if we could penetrate the woods, there was often a fallen tree, sometimes a big one that had landed at a 45 degree angle with branches to hold as we walked up into the air. We had no sense of time, only wandering back when we were thoroughly exhausted and filthy. After a good bath, which her mother usually had waiting, we might lie on our bellies in her room writing a story together or drawing pictures of castles and stables, naming all of our horses and children. We imagined husbands who would meet us as we raced on horseback across a great plain. We always planned to marry, but we knew these marriages would be between strong passionate people, more or less equal. We'd be wealthy enough to never worry about housework or mundane jobs. We might be great writers.
The haymow and barn was another playground. Bales could be moved to form tunnels and secret forts where we could take barn kittens. We could climb high to the roof on bales. When her dad had sheep we'd "adopt" a lamb, until they grew up to be indistinguishable from the rest of the flock. She had a horse, a disappointing experience after all my fantasies . When I was on Pal's back, she would either stop and crop grass, or when I was bareback, drop to her knees,lower her head and send me sliding right down her neck to the ground.
How can I regain that delight in an unplanned day? So often I feel anxiety in the emptiness, as if I have no worth if I don't have work and am lazy if I don't find a project. Travelling alone is a little in that spirit: other than my reservation at a motel halfway out to Michigan, I have no plan, no responsibilities. I stop when I want to, eat what I want, look out at the mountains, know no one. It's 8:30 and I'm outside on a bench, the sun only beginning to set.
In chidhood I'd be in bed. Not asleep: this was the unjoyful part of the day, lying awake, looking out the window , hearing less disciplined kids out playing ball. Earlier, I might have been playing hide and seek, but bedtime was enforced, so that the parents could have some alone time. I lay in the slowly darkening room, imagining my future or wondering about other universes. What if I was terribly ill, unconscious, and I'd be awakened to an entirely different life with strangers? What if someone reached through the screen and kidnapped me? If it was hot, I'd move from place to place on the sheet, trying to find a cool spot. I'd try to think of something sad because crying made me sleepy. Finally, the parents would check on us, I'd pretend to be asleep, then suddenly it was morning again. All the possibilities were before me- a trip to the library, reading the new book up in a tree, hours and hours of anything or nothing .