Blog #7 - Kathleen - Making Sense of My Writing

I've taken a sensory sort of essay of mine entitled Multi-Colored Memory and abridged it here so that it won't take up so much of everyone's time to read. So if it seems like there's something's missing, it's because there is! It's still FAR too long, though, and I apologize for the self-indulgence.

Remember how you felt when you were a child and got a big, new box of Crayola Crayons? You know, the 64-count box with the built-in sharpener on the back? You would almost shiver when you first opened it and saw all those fresh-tipped colors lined up like soldiers, ready and waiting to color your world. Remember the waxy smell the crayons emitted?

I'm going to take three colors out of that box: lemon yellow, sea green, and silver. And I'm going to use them to color a day at Tybee Island, Georgia, sometime around 1960. Of course, it is summertime. It's also a family reunion.

We arrive at Tybee during the lemon yellow morning, pulling up at Aunt Luella's large, rambling beach house, which is right on the ocean. The day is already bright and hot, and we step out onto the crunching, oyster shell driveway and shield our eyes from the sun.

I love this beach house. It is clean as a whistle and filled with bright oilcloth curtains and tablecloths. The bed frames are all painted shiny white or yellow or green, the mattresses covered with chenille bedspreads that offset the dark wooden walls.

In my memory, that morning is all yellow because it is filled with affectionate greetings and sunshine and the slipping on of brightly-colored bathingsuits. The house smells citrusy with cleaning fluid. And there is a big pitcher of lemonade in the ice box, so big that I need help to pour myself a glass. It's tart and bracing; the pulp scrapes my throat and tightens the taste buds in the back and sides of my tongue when I swallow.

When all of the relatives go down to the beach together, the day turns from lemon yellow to sea green. My cousin George, a Lutheran minister visiting from Alabama, is a robust and gregarious man who plunges into the surf, and we all follow suit. He holds court in the water, and the grown-ups gather around to talk and bob in the ocean. The gray green water is all around me, rising and falling, rising and falling, so much so that when I get in bed that night, the bed will do the same thing until I fall asleep.

I stick out my tongue to taste the salty sea; I study my shriveling finger tips. I flip over on my back and float a while, feeling the sun on my face and the gentle pressure of my dad's thumb and forefinger on one of my big toes, so that I don't drift away.

After dinner comes the silvery time. We all go out on the screened porch to be bathed and licked by the breeze. The moon is generous and full, but the grown-ups don't notice because they are too busy talking.

My tiny Great-Aunt Mamie and I are left out of the conversation, Mamie because she is a deaf mute and I because I am a child. I think that Mamie is signing to me, which panics me because I don't know how to tell her that I don't understand, but then I see that she is patting the empty place on the porch swing beside her and pointing to the moon. I nod my head and climb up beside her. We sit alone together and stare at the moon, which is like a perfectly round dollar thrown up into the sky. It casts a carpet of untarnished silver across the water that shimmers as the sea moves. It's simply brilliant. The chains of the porch swing creek, the adults laugh soft and low, the ocean murmurs. Mamie and I are silent and satisfied to be moonstruck.

A lemon yellow morning, a sea green afternoon, and a silvery night long, long ago. Everyone that was there that day is dead except for one boy cousin, my mother and me. I carefully put the three crayons back into the box so that they will not break, and I close the lid.