Windows (Again)

Confession: my cousin and I once sneaked downhill to peer into the windows of a neighbor's house to see what we could see. I had not read Harriet, the Spy, and he most certainly had not. But I had read Nancy Drew mysteries, so I fancied myself a detective of domestic life -- others' domestic life. The two of us wrote (maybe even only once) a neighborhood newspaper, featuring what we imagined might have happened in our grandparents' former house.

For me now, windows shine most without people like these stained glass panes in a chapel door, sunlight splashing their colors on a dark wall.

I don't need a story -- fictional or factual. The windows are enough.

Weird Things I Remembered in the Car Wash

I
"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can," Mother repeating as she leaned over the tub to wash my hair.

II
Discovering what I forgot when I read The Little Engine That Could as an adult: the little blue engine's female gender


III
Lazy Sunday mornings at the Tchoupitoulas Pig and then the Uptown Car Wash & Express Lube, watching my Mazda move through the long tunnel, enjoying the hand buffers' banter.

IV
A poem.

One Boy Told Me
by Naomi Shihab Nye 

And I will be deep water too.
Wait. Just wait. How deep is the river?
Would it cover the tallest man with his hands in the air?

Your head is a souvenir.

When you were in New York I could see you
in real life walking in my mind.

I’ll invite a bee to live in your shoe.
What if you found your shoe
full of honey?

What if the clock said 6:92
instead of 6:30? Would you be scared?

My tongue is the car wash
for the spoon.

Can noodles swim?

My toes are dictionaries.
Do you need any words?

From now on I’ll only drink white milk
on January 26.

What does minus mean?
I never want to minus you.

Just think—no one has ever seen
inside this peanut before!

It is hard being a person.

I do and don’t love you— 
isn't that happiness?

V
Rocking in the wash and melancholia: an oddly pleasurable combination.

I Ate the Frog

I confess that my sweet craving got the better of me.

Over three days, I ate the Harry Potter Chocolate Frog.

(It looked much better than it tasted.)

But the real reward lay inside that beautiful little box, under the frog: a Helga Hufflepuff 3-D card.

Suddenly, my childhood fascination with such cardboard panels rushed back. I studied the card, slanting it this way and that, in light and out, up close and far away, and while I know the trick has something to do with the coating and the ridges and the pigment, I am as enchanted as I was at four or five when I saw the first of these magical visual tricks.

Please: don't tell me how it's done. I considered searching online and decided against it. I still need to believe in magic.