Here's a little piece of my past:

"324 EAST CLAY STREET"

The rain continues to fall, steady and resolute in its resolve to saturate the ground. I’m home alone, another day off wasting away, my mood sullen and mildly depressed after so many sun-free days filled with tragedy. Staring out the window, watching fat drops of rain join the flood that used to be my backyard, I begin to think of my Mom and how much she loved the rain. This cracks a smile across the dormant expression that’s been holding my face hostage, and as my mind begins to flutter back in time and with no agenda to distract me, I relax and let it come. Almost at once I find myself happily lost in the tranquility of a small Southern Iowa town, ironically yet aptly named after the great Seminole Indian, Chief Osceola. A freckle-faced boy with teeth far too large for someone so small greets me, and merging into one, I begin another journey down the road of memories.

It all begins with the yard, expansive enough that it could easily be mistaken for some once-majestic and manicured park long since forgotten. This tattered lawn folds with quiet grace into a realm of unkempt gardens, snarled raspberry patches and gravel roads that form dusty checkerboard patterns stretching to the far edges of a young boy’s reality. A baseball field, with base paths forever etched into the fertile Iowa soil by the proud owners of Red Ball Jets and P.F. Flyers making their runs for glory, slumbers peacefully to one side amidst this cheerful clutter. The grass, a thick and surly entity of dandelions, three-leafed clover and a smattering of ancient bluegrass, is often the only spectator at impromptu games and shows its reverence by allowing the field to remain. A maple tree bigger than a child’s imagination towers over the front yard like some benevolent, all-knowing giant. Its leaves flash silver-green clues to the wind and offer hints of enlightenment to those still young at heart. Dark blue, cool shade on the hottest of days provides requiem for children slick with salt-sweet sweat. Bulging, gnarled roots boil from the ground and raise the red-orange brick sidewalk like a splinter festering in one’s finger pleading for release. Endless armies of friendly helicopters launch themselves on one-way trips throughout the summer, each piloted by radiant dreams of the eternal.

The house, small and very square, camps without regret near the center of the sprawling yard. Chalky-white paint peels freely from its epidermis like the pale skin of the town’s inhabitants when first exposed to the sun after too many long, winter days. The concrete foundation, cracked and moon-scaped, has two cob-webbed windows on each side that offer an ethereal glimpse into a basement constantly moist and best used for nothing, but none the less pressed into service as storage space for family heirlooms. A screen door, its screen permanently scarred and puckered by the thrust of young hands rushing to play, hangs agape. Unable or simply unwilling to close completely anymore, it bangs softly in secret communication with the slightest breeze and provides reassurance that all is well, beckoning those who pass to come inside and see for themselves. This prophesizing of what lies through its portal is worth listening to, for it was in this non-descript house buried in the heartland that I learned about magic.

The inside of my first home was decorated with furniture donated from relatives, family friends, and sale purchases, a combination that my mother referred to as “Early American Mish-Mash”. This ‘style’ was dictated more by necessity than choice as my father’s struggling service station seemed always to be one short step from going under the perilous financial waves that pound upon the metaphorical shores of most small towns. The very scenario my parents must certainly have lamented over as they lay in bed at night allowed my two sisters and I a freedom not found in our friend’s homes. Whether by accident or design, my parents left the entire home open to our inquisitive young minds and bodies, and in doing so gave their children a true sense of belonging. Intuitively, my siblings and I realized that we were the three most important things in our home.

Separating the living room and kitchen was a room we all called “The Dinning Room”, although it contained no facilities for dinning, and to my best recollection there was never any attempt made to dine within its confines. Any number of titles would have better defined this room’s truth, and something like “The Get Wild Room” would have provided crystalline insight as to its real nature for a first time visitor. My mother’s eclectic furniture was sparsely placed along the walls leaving the hardwood floors wide open, the soft-brown caramel shinning seductively and challenging my sisters and me to fly across its expanse in stocking feet. I can remember lying face down, cross-eyed in my attempts to make out my reflection, the floor satiny smooth against the tip of my tongue.

Commanding most of one faded beige wall in this room that surely must have smirked at the inaccuracy of its own title loomed the most significant piece of furniture in our home. It lurked there as if the house had somehow evolved around it, a behemoth insisting we pay attention, its ego bullying mere pine and plywood into figurative sawdust. Well worn like everything else we owned, its aura frayed but not diminished, I’ve no idea of how or when it became ours, or more specifically my mother’s. She was the only master this beast acknowledged, and through it she spread some of her most powerful and abundant magic. For you see, my mother was first and foremost, a magician.

“Please mommy, please, please play the dancing song” my sisters and I would beg. “Alright, but only once or twice” my mother would reply, her merriment welling up and matching our own, and almost never “I’m too busy” or “Maybe later”. My mother’s time was always abundant when it came to us, and I believe this was the very heart of her magic. Joyously engulfing my mother like baby otters, in that unique way that only a child can move from point A to B, that wonderful mix of sliding, jumping, falling, crawling and skipping, we would accompany her into the dinning room. And then, looking at us as if we were indeed her best work, she would slip elegantly and fearlessly onto the bench in front of the beast and begin to play.

The sounds that sprang from my mother’s ancient Baldwin mesmerized my sisters and I like nothing else could in those days. When she would play our favorite song, which we always referred to as “The Dancing Song” instead of whatever the title actually was, a passerby gazing into our home might have suspected some pagan ritual was in progress. The music went to our very marrow, the rhythm imploring our souls to burst, and we entered into a frenzied state void of any embarrassment or recrimination, our sole purpose self-expression at its deepest level. My mother would play furiously, flawlessly and without regard for the level of decibels spewing into our home and leaking into the outside atmosphere. Laughing with us, at us, and in total alignment with the wonder of it all, she would play faster and faster, spurring us on to the brink of collapse. Sometimes I would slow my frenzy imperceptibly and marvel at my mother as she banged away, seeing her like our yard; fierce and kind, disheveled and perfect all at once. During these episodes of “glorious madness” (as my father called them), she was no longer our mother, but instead became a force of nature, someone so dominating and in control that ‘the moment’ was the only state you cared to be in. If there is such a thing as a ‘perfect moment’, my mother could string them together like pearls on a necklace with her playing.

Like travel at the speed of light, my mother was able to suspend time with her playing. That monstrous Baldwin was her weapon against all things boring and mundane, and she commanded it like an avenging angel hell-bent on showing us that unbridled joy is far more important and real than pomp and circumstance. When she finally ceased one of her performances, my sisters and I would more often than not fall to the floor, moist and throbbing, our faces thick with cramped grins of unadulterated joy, hearts pounding, our breathing free, heavy, and quick. My mother would slide from the piano bench and join us on the floor, her own breathing steady and full, a smile resonating her love for us. Recounting in hilarious detail our individual dance moves and quirks witnessed while playing, she held the moment open a bit longer, our laughter continuing into the infinite, our bond transcending flesh, bone and genetics. Eventually, out of respect for the impermanence of all things, as time crept imperceptibly back into our world, we would heave our bodies from the floor and reluctantly allow our mother to continue the never-ending chores that come with parenthood, innocently unaware of the great gift we had just been given.

From a human perspective, time moves forward, and adolescence soon descends upon the innocent and carries us all into new pursuits and adventures, to places where the magic of youth no longer buoys us from moment to moment. My mother, upon witnessing these changes in her children, must certainly have longed for the days of “The Dancing Song” and all they embodied, but as a true magician she did her best to help us navigate the road of hormones and heartache we would all soon travel. My father’s service station had in fact bobbed beneath the wave’s one too many times, but he landed on his feet in a new job that paid well, although it kept him away during the week. His new job necessitated a move to Des Moines, Iowa, a city hundreds of times larger than Osceola, and also to a newer, bigger, more polished home. My mother used her magic to ensure it was a warm and loving place, but its smoother edges and more upscale neighbors brought unexpected changes for us all. Resuming her career as a nurse, my mother helped to heal others, both in body and spirit, and became life-long friends with many of her co-workers and patients. Desperately wanting to become “cool”, my sisters and I left the small town behind and invited the change of the present to wash over us, for better or for worse. Our wishes were granted, and over the course of our first year in Des Moines we all gained acceptance and new circles of friends, friends who showed us the ways of the city in direct, and occasionally cruel, fashion. Soon, our begging to visit old friends just fifty miles south dried up, our tears no longer filling the rivers that flowed to our past.

And what of the beast? It was moved unceremoniously into the basement of our new home, its immense weight breaking several steps in the process, perhaps one final act of defiance as it sensed its imminent fate. Its final resting place was a dark corner seldom visited, and soon the beast fell prey to the vestiges of a family distracted by the many entrapments of life squared. Though its silence resonated deeply within us, we were no longer so easily entertained. The complexities of growing up had descended upon us all, and one by one we turned and walked away from the magic.