I Remember

by Susan Cameron

Reader alert: If you hate memoir, stop here. This is some of the material that's going to end up in a much bigger piece.

I remember driving to the cider mill in the fall. Michigan in autumn is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The trees! There are so many, so beautiful; scarlet, gold, orange, yellow, brown, leaves rustling and falling soft as snowflakes. As you walk through them on the pathways they make a soft swooshing sound. When you're a kid, you rake them into piles and jump in them, rolling around with your friends in the leaves, laughing and shrieking and getting leaves in your hair, all wild and tangled. We used to burn them -- that was one of my favorite jobs when I was a kid. I'd rake them into piles, carry the piles to the wire trash-burning basket in the alley, stuff it full and fire it up. The smell of the smoke epitomized fall.

The cider mill was out in the woods next to a stream, of course. You could buy fresh-pressed apple cider, doughnuts hot out of the grease, hunks of smoked cheese and fresh apples. You'd sit under the canopy of red/gold/brown and eat and drink and listen to the rush of water burbling over the rocks in the streambed. The sky would be that bright, fresh blue, and the clouds would be as light and puffy as cotton candy, and the air smelled like trees and cold fruit. Breathing spring air made me feel giddy and light-headed and like dancing in the street (and sometimes I did!), but breathing fall air made me feel calm, content, and hungry. I was ravenous in the fall. Was it the change in seasons? Winter coming? Getting ready to hibernate? Who knows. But I would roll those hunks of smoked cheese around my mouth, and close my eyes and sigh a little from the taste of those doughnuts, and chase it with a few deep slugs of fresh apple cider, and life just couldn't get any better than that.

I remember winter all too well. When I was in grade school, we would all go to bed and snuggle under our blankets and quilts, and the heat would be turned off to save money. When we awoke, the house was icy cold. My grandmother would turn on the heat, there would be a muffled "whoomph" from the basement, and in a while, heat would begin to rise from the registers in the floor. There were wooden grids that sat over the vents leading from the furnace. I would take a deep breath, throw off my warm covers, and leap from my cozy bunkbed to the cold wooden floor. I'd scurry to the register in the hall and squat over it in my flannel nightgown, holding it open like a tent, feeling the delicious heat rising up through my collar. That didn't last long -- my chilly school clothes awaited. At one point they no longer used the furnace and tried just heating the kitchen with the oven (whose bright idea was that? How did they think this would save money?), and it was horrible. My teeth would be chattering like a flamenco dancer's castanets before I could make it to the kitchen.

I remember how cold the basement was in winter. I would grab my schoolbooks, open the kitchen door to the landing and feel the chill by the drafty back door. I'd shut the kitchen door behind me, muffling the sound of the adults yelling at each other. By the time I'd walked down the flight of steps and arrived in my sanctuary, I was already shivering. The cold seeped from the cement floor through my shoes, and the cinderblock walls were freezing to the touch.

I enjoyed reading. I was an "A" and "B" student in high school, though I think my study habits were peculiar in retrospect. The basement's ambiance left something to be desired, but it was easier to concentrate in the quiet freezing gloom than it was upstairs.

There was only one 60-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling for the right side of the basement, but there was also an old lamp on my grandfather's desk. I had enough light to read by. I would wrap myself up in some dead relative's heavy drapes that had been stored in plastic and hung on the clothesline. They held in body heat really well. I would wrap myself in my long ivory robes, push my glasses up on my nose, and fire up the turntable. It wasn't exactly a record player any more, since the speakers were shot to hell, but I'd put on an album anyway and listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young whispering "teach your children well" in a sort of ghost song.

I'd spread out my books and papers, switch on the desk lamp, push my glasses up again, and start reading my homework assignment. Breathing correctly was extremely important. It was necessary to breathe through the nose, especially when exhaling, because the basement was so cold that a breath exhaled through the mouth would fog up my glasses. They would remain fogged unless I took them off, slid them under the drapes and wiped them on my shirt. (I couldn't use the drapes; they didn't absorb moisture and left the glasses smeary). Anyhow, I'd have to open the drapes and let out some of my heat in order to clean the glasses, so I learned to be more careful. As I read, I would tuck one foot under myself to warm it, then switch to the other one. ("...Your children's hell...will slowly go by...")

Writing was harder than reading. Gloves were too clumsy so I had to write bare-handed. I'd write until my fingers got too cold to hold the pen, then I'd tuck the right hand in until it was warm and flexible again. It had a mind of its own -- once it was warm, it didn't really want to go back out there, but like a good soldier it did what it had to do. Reading was easier on it -- it only had to zip outside to turn a page, then scurry back into the warm shelter of the drapes. Forearms and elbows could keep the book open while draped in the material.

I could barely hear the arguing and screaming from my little nook. I'd just tuck the drapes around me nice and snug, crank up the broken record player to maximum volume (barely audible Graham Nash -- "don't you ever ask them why...if they told you, you would cry...") and settle in for as long as I could hold out.

Piece of cake.

Susan Cameron, copyright 2009