The throw of the dice this week falls on the end of the road journey….and the mystery I call home.
Every morning I rose at dawn to sit in the parlor. There I watched the sunlight illuminate the, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” movie board in the hearth, and drink a cup of coffee in silence. I felt at home. Those are the most precious moments of the day; the moment of peace before throwing the dice.
I looked out the window to the street, and one morning a handful of eggplant leaves autumnized to a transparent sheen of bronzed gold. The silence following summer descended down over the rooftops of the people that lived on East High Avenue. The sky was seared with streaks of white, and bubblegum pink clouds drifted just above the rising of the sun. The moment was a peaceful stroke to a summer that had been indeterminate, chancy and without design. We went back with the intention to sell the house, and we couldn’t let Follies go. Now, four years later, I’m about to return with the same idea.
In the moments when SC awakens, I heard his footsteps on the creaking wood floor. I closed the journal and went in the kitchen to make buttermilk pancakes. When we live in San Diego, and now Santa Fe, NM we eat fruit and muffins, usually in short order, between telephone calls, and conversations about things that it’s too early to discuss. Those mornings a Follies House, he lingered on the porch and read the New York Times, because he had the time.
If my body was willing, I ‘d run down to the stream, and look for the blue heron. Along the way, I’d pass by the quiet man with the three beagles, and a mother walking with her children to the bus stop. I ‘d pass the funeral parlor and look the other way, and when I saw the Federal Express Truck, he’d wave because he knows I’m the woman that receives mail addressed to Soaring Crow. The front porches I passed are the opening pages to the home stories of people inside. If there are children, the remains of their toys are scattered about. If they are elderly, they will leave their gardening shoes by the back door, and if they are a young couple, they will be in the midst of home repairs, a roof that needs fixing, or a new coat of paint. I’d observed just one campaign poster board in the neighborhood. It seems to have gone out of style to post your politics on your car or in front of your house ( not now). In the front yard of one home, a banner was pitched in the ground that read, “Remember our Troops.” I didn’t ask but it is probable they have a son serving in Iraq.
The hanging flower planters are replaced with mums and corn stalks. Some scatter straw on the lawn. I used to giggle at that September tradition, then I got giddy about arranging my seasonal display in the yard.The run back through town took me by the high school, a brawny brick building that looks like the setting for a chapter from “Catcher in the Rye.” A teacher passed by, dressed in a conservative suit and pumps, and smiled. She looked wholesome as apple pie, and I wondered if I ever looked like that.
On chilly mornings, the fireplaces may be smoking, sending out puffs of burning wood as sweet as perfume. Our own fireplace was inoperable, which explains why the movie poster was in the fireplace. By 8:00 a.m. the yellow school buses are chugging up the street and the children, gathered at our corner; bob up and down in innocent bursts of energy.They are celebrating the beginning of a new day. I arrived home about this time, and stopped to watch the quaintness of the moment. The habitat of those surroundings striped me bare of my Hollywood movie star Southern California roots. I was nourished by quaint tradition and scenery, and that is one answer to this mystery I call home.
I ate cider donuts when I wanted and instead of working out three or four times a week, I took long walks, past the Sunny Side farms to see the young foals in the corral. I dressed in style-less shoes and pants, whenever I felt like it, without fashion consciousness. I preferrred to go to bed early and read Carson McCullers novels. If I woke up in the middle of the night, I sat on the porch and looked at the hands of a storm forming in the sky.
People dropped by my house without notice, and sometimes just walked in and yelled my name. My favorite Broadway hangout knows who I am, what kind of wine I like, and that we like to sit on the patio. Sometimes I met strangers who had heard of the Follies House, and I felt a twinge of pride.
We left Follies behind, and journeyed back through the plains of middle America to Taos, New Mexico, and on to Solana Beach. A few years later we moved to Taos, and then to Santa Fe. I thought the mystery of that journey was over; that Follies would always feel like home; but it’s been a long time. This summer we’ll journey back and find out.
