My beautiful friend, with the beautiful smile.
Weighted by fear.
Wanting happiness, but not minding your own.
Keep it simple.
Keep it clear.
Take a long, deep breath.
And another.
Take hold of the thing that gives you power.
That powers your passion.
That fills you with fire.
Be fearless.
You’ll soon find the you that smiles more than once in a while.
And makes you my beautiful friend, with the beautiful smile.
Each time I light the candle gifted me, a rich, earthy fragrance brings forward hazy memories.
Vague images which come briefly into view and then vanish amid so many forgotten days.
I light the candle again, and back they come.
Out of focus, but strong.
With the faint but familiar fragrance still in the air, still teasing my will-menopause-ever-end addled mind, I reach turn over the candle, hoping the label will reveal something – anything – that might re-animate these mislaid memories.
And there is my answer.
Pipe Tobacco.
Mr. Gould’s den suddenly comes into focus.
Tucked in the corner of the Gould’s grey-green, two chimney, Colonial, which sits a short block from the edge of Lake Michigan.
You can find it by heading straight east down Scranton Avenue, the main street of Lake Bluff’s hardly-a-downtown-business-district.
The old house sits in a quiet spot amid tree-filled lots and winding ravines and looks as if it had been there almost as long as the trees which tower over it.
Stepping into the Gould’s house is like stepping from Mr. Peabody’s Way Back Machine.
Everything – from its old plaster and uneven, wood floors, to its cozy nooks and small, sunlit rooms filled with old things – incites my imagination.
And oh, the kitchen – old bricks and beams – always smelling of fresh-baked bread.
At least in my head.
Betsy cuts thick slices off a golden brown loaf cooling on the tall counter and we sink our teeth into the still warm, chewy insides that hint of honey and butter and leave our fingers powdered with flour.
And my stomach hungry for more.
With the final crusts stuffed into our mouths, we climb the steep, narrow, crooked flight of stairs to Betsy’s room, straight ahead.
Two rooms, really. One being her bedroom, the other, a small, summer sleeping porch with northwest walls of old, paned windows; where generations of restless sleepers sought lake breezes during the dependably hot and humid Midwest summer nights.
Cots and cotton nightgowns.
Late summer sun and the strident thrum of crickets.
Another time still haunts the corners of this room.
Ghosts hidden beneath the piles of fabric, patterns, and sewing stuff cluttering the small, bright space at the corner of the Gould’s old, grey-green, two-chimney Colonial near the lake.
We spread out across Betsy’s high bed and talk dreamily about our four favorite men: John, Paul, George and Ringo. Spinning their albums until daylight leaves and my ride home appears at the front door.
The rest of the upstairs is a mystery to me, being two-thirds occupied by teen brothers, whose rare appearances and even rarer visits to Betsy’s room usually last briefly and annoy her thoroughly.
They simply scare the shit out of me.
On occasion, when Betsy seeks out her dad during my visits, we wander back down the creaky, old stairs, through the dark front entry hall (which no one ever seems to enter through) to the one and only place I ever recall seeing Betsy’s Dad.
His den.
With a timid rap on the solid, old door, we hear his gentle voice give permission to enter this space.
His special place.
His sanctuary.
And it is here, as the door opens and I enter behind my best friend, that the smell of sweet and spicy, earthy and smoky, becomes a part of me.
As does the sight of Mr. Gould behind his desk.
Smoking his pipe.
Sweatered like the perfect professor.
Ever engaging his hands and his mind.
Creating.
Drawing.
Building dreams.
And ships in bottles.
Magnificent, masted vessels of extraordinary detail. Masterfully and meticulously constructed and painted within ridiculously constrained confines.
When finished, each ship joins the miniature armada that floats on a sea of books on wooden shelves, near paneled walls, and paned windows with mustard drapes; above a glass-topped coffee table filled with shells and sticky sand from spilled milks.
Each night (Betsy tells me), without fail, her dad closes those long, mustard-colored curtains overlooking Scranton Avenue and sits at his desk to busy his hands and block out the world.
Yet each and every time a car drives past, she finds it most mysterious that he draws the drapes back – just enough to watch the car pass – and then closes them again, and returns to his task.
And his deliciously fragrant pipe.
And his secret snacks – Pepsi and Fritos – hidden beneath his desk.
And there he stays, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, making beautiful things for make-believe worlds.
I would have liked to sit in there for hours exploring the books, the shelves, the bottles, and the mind of a quiet, creative man.
All of which are out of reach.
Yet now reach out.
Calling me back to the old, grey-green, two-chimney, Colonial on Scranton Avenue.
To Betsy’s dad’s den.
To his ships and his pipes.
And the sweet aroma.
To fresh baked bread.
And lazy afternoons.
With best friends.
In Megan’s bedroom, half a flight up the 1959 Split-level Ranch with pink brick and putty colored paint, I fidget with a funky, multi-colored fiber optic lamp, while she plays records and introduces me to jazz, and we wait for her parents to leave and best friends to descend upon the many leveled house.
We use the un-parented hours to nurture this hand-picked clan, filled with constantly morphing personalities birthed from overactive glands and imaginations, and recently recognized skills as poets, actors and musicians; as Pig Out Queens and Homecoming Queens, Make Out Queens and Dancing Queens.
Never enough crowns for all those queens. Never enough time to be all the things, but always enough room on the dance floor. Though all signs point to clumsy and shy, my pelvic-thrusting friends are determined to try to make me Hustle and shake my groove thing in the ground-level living room of metallic gold and green.
Sweating and spinning and dipping. Air Band greats ever in the making. Drinking and joking and choking with laughter. Using voices and faces to find inner traces of people and places. Writing truly foul lyrics to sweet Christmas carols – using every nasty word we can muster to repulse and to fluster.
Years of piano lessons color the scene, mixing Joplin, Pachelbel and Winston into the frenetic hours of being girls, and being teens. Ceasing only long enough to ransack the family’s world of snacks in the very lowest level of Megan’s Split-level Ranch. Like chubby, pubescent picnic-bound ants.
A fairytale kingdom of infinite munchies. Tupperware and tins and tightly sealed snacks of caramels and pretzels and cookies – wafers and Fudge Stripes, shortbreads and sugar. Enough to make teens, with all their snacking needs, merry – and me, ecstatic for all the food my Mom’s cupboards have never seen.
Megan’s kitchen is where I first try it, but Mom refuses to buy it, so I look for this Chef Boyardee diet on other kitchen shelves. I like my SpaghettiOs straight from the can, finding the same comfort in it as in my friendships and the many hours spent at the 1959 Split-level Ranch – all being terribly saucy, truly effortless, full of crap, and distinctly gratifying.
The toboggan’s scarred and battered prow, with its narrow strips of varnished wood, scratched, warped and dinged, attests to its long history of snowy campaigns.
Trees and rocks being its eternal foes.
Its red, vinyl pad is cracked and beaten.
Its plastic rope ties ever-untying.
Yet it takes little prodding to initiate sledding on the golf course near our home.
After a few phone calls, friends from town gather at our back door with a variety of apparatus, ranging from plastic school lunch trays to super-duper downhill racers.
Like a procession of well laden ants, we head down Shoreacres Road and into the heart of winter with spirits high. During the mile or so journey to the ravines, the boys can’t wait for the final destination before throwing themselves and their sleds at slopes of snow – even the dingy, frozen piles left by the plows.
Cheeks crimson, noses dripping, devilish smiles rising, and big boots trudging heavily, they jettison themselves, scraping briefly atop the icy, roadside heap.
Undeterred, the flatter, frozen road ahead spawns another attempt, and the unsuspecting walking ahead find themselves not indirectly in the path of another misguided trajectory.
Leaving victims strewn in the wake, shouting obscenities, in between fits of laughter.
Crossing thigh-high snowdrifts, pushing against the penetrating Lake Michigan winds, we know there’s reward in the shelter of the woods. In the rise and fall of the ravines just ahead.
By the time the last of the stragglers arrive, bodies are already hurtling down the small, steep hills – feet first and head first – as untouched, uncharted snow is quickly trampled smooth and slick.
The boys and their sleds go fast and faster toward the woods below, laughing like hyena, until the next sound is cracking plastic. Followed by moans, grunts, more laughter… and a few more well chosen profanities.
More than slightly apprehensive to sled in tandem with these boy rocketeers, I also know I’ll never gain the speed I crave when sledding solo. So I climb aboard, wrap my arms around their thick, damp, denim layers and look below, to a hand-packed jump designed to make you fly.
Pleading for caution, I know full well that caution is about to be damned.
Down we go, straight toward the jump and into the air. But the moment is fleeting before losing my hold, my pilot, a boot, and a glove. Yet gaining a face full of snow and a smile from ear to ear.
From a resting spot at the top of the hill, I watch the boys with their boundless bravado, attempt daredevil moves of surfing and spinning and bumper sleds. Determined to create one more spectacular crash before the snowy adventure can be considered a success.
By the time the sun begins its early descent, the dampness has sunk deep into our layers and it’s time to stumble home, iced-over and exhausted. The older boys taking turns pulling along the little ones with nothing left to give.
Each step energized by the thought of the warmth that will embrace us when we open the back door. Fueled by the knowledge that a crackling fire and hot chocolates wait at the other end.
We try to light it squatting beneath an old, planked bridge.
Like naughty, little trolls.
Laughing and cursing the unrelenting wind and an almost empty box of matches.
Coughing.
Giggling.
Coughing.
Startled by the snap of a twig.
Whispering and waiting for something in particular.
Not caring about anything in particular.
Until the tiny roach sticks to my mouth and I wince.
Pulling the burning paper from my lower lip.
Betsy laughs.
Which makes me laugh.
Even though it hurts like hell and my lip is already blistering.
Making me to worry about how I’m going to explain the burn to Mom and Dad –
who notice every pimple.
But then I stop caring.
Content to be beside my friend.
Standing firm against the bitter lake winds.
Feeling happy just to be,
we walk beside the tiny creek.
Sudden cravings hasten our final footsteps
down the deserted road of my secluded neighborhood.
Stepping over acorns and twigs fallen from late October trees.
Side by side.
Stoned.
Smiling in the comfortable silence of a very, best friend.
Dog-eared Stories by anne celano frohna 