The Bridge

In an earlier post about the tiny white lights on my house, I mentioned the living room fireplace of my childhood. Around it were white tiles with green family scenes my mother painted and then fired in small basement kiln. I also mentioned the heavy table my father made for me, the top of which features six of those tiles. I love one of them in particular. My great-niece E is just about the age I was when my mother made this tile.If I wanted to wander, I was free to roam the woods behind the house or the creek running along the front of the property and streaming below the bridge, but I was never to go beyond the bridge. It was more than a limit, however: it was a kind of window on the world.

In second grade, when I had chickenpox, I sat on the bridge for hours and wrote down every license tag number of a passing car. I still don't know why, but I was fascinated that so many people passed during the day and I wondered where they were going and where they had gone, and why.

At Christmas, I stood on the bridge and helped my mother usher children into the light so they could call to Santa. Sometimes, I stood on the steps of the glassed-in porch and gazed at the white lights of the Christmas tree and the white lights beyond, strung along the bridge rails, and unfocused my eyes, imagining myself afloat among stars like The Little Prince.

After my mother read me the Winnie-the-Pooh books, I played Poohsticks, sometimes with a neighbor friend, sometimes alone.

I always liked leaning and looking, at first through the rails and then slowly over them. Looking up the creek from the vantage point of the bridge, I could see the Santa rock and the house out of the corner of my right eye, the lip of the landing before Mother's grotto garden and my whale rock across the creek, and the tree canopy shading both.

I loved the noting, the leaning and the looking, and still do.