When I was little, everything was big.
When I was little . . .
. . . the houses were tall.
. . . the street in front of my babysitter's house was as wide as an asphalt sea.
. . . my dreams happened in giant time, with small me shrunk down to tiny size, watching the grown-ups acting out their roles on a lofty stage, floating far above me like the giant balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
When I was little . . .
. . . my curiosity was large.
. . . unexplained events worried me.
. . . my first set of fat-bodied Crayola markers went missing one day. I searched the craft drawer. I poked my hand into the space behind the couch cushions. I peered under the springy seats of the car. I checked under beds. No sign of markers anywhere. Every day for a week I asked my mom where they might be. She seemed unbothered by the mystery.
When I was little . . .
. . . the world was too loud and fast. My cousins zoomed past me on the dirt path between my grandmother’s house and my aunt’s house. They crashed sideways into me, bounced off each other, happily fed off each other’s energy like colliding atoms. I hid under the bed in the front bedroom of my grandmother’s house, and peered through the curtain formed by the braided tassels edging the chenille bedspread. It was dark and cool and dusty under the bed, the linoleum cracked and curling in places and smelling of very old things, like the dried-out strand dropped from the gray cotton mop that sat in its perpetual Lysol bath in the corner of the kitchen. I left my ball and jacks in a loose pile on the bedroom floor and willed the world to come to me, one cousin at a time, softly, quietly.
When I was little . . .
. . . clothes were my torturers.
. . . the tags on my shirts sliced into the back of my neck, poking me quietly but insistently, never letting up. They whispered a raspy little distracting tune when I was bent over my coloring book or when I was leaning back to swing.
. . . turtleneck sweaters choked me, and I pulled and tugged at the neck to stretch it out so that I could breathe.
. . . waistbands bit into baby-fat flesh, pressing too tightly and squeezing out my breath so that I couldn’t run as fast as my graceful friend.
. . . shoe tips attracted each other, tripping me up to land in an awkward sprawl. So, barefoot, in a smocked dress, I played tag and tried to outrun the chasers, arched my panicked body away from their hands, tried not to be “It.”
When I was little . . .
. . . time was a vast ocean. Summer days stretched out bright blue and open like the sky, not even bounded by the horizon meeting the earth.
. . . I swam in the city swimming pool until my fingers and toes got pruny with ridges of waterlogged skin. I borrowed a penny from the change purse in my mother’s handbag, opening the metal clasp with slippery fingers. I tossed the penny into the water and jumped in after it. Underwater I peered down and watched time contract even further as the penny floated slowly down to settle on the pool floor. Then I stood up and bent my head towards the water, pushing my wet hair back behind my ears. My face broke the flat plane of the water’s surface. I pinpointed the penny’s location, pointing a finger to orient my entire body in a direct path to the coin. Keeping my finger still, I took my face out of the water and checked the penny again. But my sight line had changed, its angle slightly altered passing through air and then water, and the penny seemed to sit on an infinitely receding point. Pinching nostrils closed, I launched myself down to the pool bottom in a flurry of pumping legs and arms that created a mini vortex of water bubbles. Eyes closed, I palmed my hands along the pool bottom until skin met smooth penny edge, and then I rocketed back to the surface. Endless repeat of this process, my world narrowed to the penny and its time-hiccuping descent and rescue.
When I was little . . .
. . . the night sky was black velvet and the moon shone as bright as the sun.
. . . the stars were close, and all mine, my splayed fingers spanning a constellation as easily as they cupped a tangle of spiky jacks.
. . . I was the central hub of a great wheel, and as I spun in a slow circle, the stars danced along with me. I wanted to pluck each sparkle from the end of the spoke and gather them into a glittery pile in the folds of my skirt. Then I could take them out one by one and name them, putting them back into an order I could remember — red ones next to white ones in a candy-cane pattern, or the twinkly blue ones like the glittering ice crystals of a blueberry snow cone.
