4 minute read
WHISPERS ON THE WIND by Carolyn Haines WELL DONE! Non-fiction
WHISPERS ON THE WIND by Carolyn Haines
Last night I walked the red dirt road of my childhood. The smell of dust stirred by car tires, the whisper of the trees singing softly in the breeze weave the picture of the past. I hear their names. These are the women of my grandmother’s and mother’s generation. How large they loom in my memory.
Atty, Francis, Velma, Edna, Ena, Hattie, Mattie, Marilyn. The wind brought them back to me in moments of laughter or scolding. I was not a well-behaved child, but these women never tattled on me for my wayward conduct.
The whir of bicycle wheels on the sidewalk churns up the ghosts of my brothers and my dog, Venus. Those summer days, hair plastered with sweat, wetness dripping down pigtails and leaving spots on my blouse as I pumped and pumped the pedals as hard as I could to keep up. To fly. To conquer time and place and transcend.
At times I pause in the cool oak shade in front of Miss Hattie and Miss Mattie’s home as they sit on their porch, sisters bonded together, dipping Garrett snuff. My ears buzz with their secrets.
“The ticket to a long, healthy life is to stay away from men,” Miss Hattie would say. She lived to be 104.
Down the road was the steep hill where pine trees dropped their needles and created the perfect path to slide down in a cardboard box. We stifled our screams of pleasure, alert to the Weimaraners that guarded the hill, their sleek, muscled gray bodies like steel bullets, rushing pell-mell to chase us out to Cox Street where Aunt Willard had ice water for us. Another street, this one paved, filled with names that live in my memory. Willard, Lottie, Margaret, Eula Lee.
Pushing to the surface of sleep like a drowning woman, I breathe a moment before I allow myself to think. The roads of my childhood are gone now, along with most of the houses, and all of the people. The local hospital has expanded into the terrain I once loved and cherished. It is a sore tooth in my heart.
In my dreams, though, I visit my old friends and the familiar places that painted my childhood golden and safe.
I hear the punk, punk, punk, of the shuttlecock against the racket, back and forth in a game of badminton with my best friend, Marie. When the streetlight comes on, it is time to go home and prepare the iced tea for supper. Chocolate pie, my favorite, for dessert.
When I wake up in my farm home, a place I’ve lived for over thirty years, I am lost. The gentle snore of a dog anchors me. I call this place home. The home I built. And I realize that my name, Carolyn, will soon be lost in the memories of others. Like Edna and Hattie, old-fashioned names that are spoken no longer, Carolyn is out of vogue today.
I was named for my mother’s childhood best friend, who is also gone. Soon, like the women who live on the roads of my dreams, I will be gone too, my name retired. New names for a new generation. I will become one of the whispers on the wind, a wraith of memory.
