First home - Metairie, Louisiana (the suburbs of New Orleans)
My very first memory dates back to my first home in New Orleans. The room is pale blue (or maybe it's just the light) and there are white lace curtains on the window, which is open to the lush green expanse outside. The curtains float dreamily in a soft breeze. The purring sound of a fan murmurs from across the room.
My mother is holding me as she sits on the edge of a little bed. She's cradling me against her, and I can see the big, shiny, black buttons on her crisp cotton shirt, the velvety cream of her throat, and the graceful curve of her chin. Above the collar, her thick dark hair swings in a bob cut. But what captivates me most, through a dreamy haze, is the slow rhythm of her warm body rocking along with her heartbeat as she sings in a low voice,
"Once I had a sweetheart, and now I have none,
Once I had a sweetheart, and now I have none,
He's gone and leave me, he's gone and leave me,
He's gone and leave me to sorrow and mourn."
That's it - that's the extent of this memory, but it's as clear as a bell.
My next memory is just another snippet - of my mother and me standing on a little porch, with my daddy waving goodbye in his military fatigues. The day is bright and hot, and my father's wavy, chestnut hair gleams in the sun as he turns back to us, squints into the sunlight, and calls out, "See you later, alligator!"
I clap my hands with glee and chirp back, "In a while, crocodile!"
My daddy is always leaving. But he always, always comes back.
Dad, leaving - with his ubiquitous bag
One of my clearest memories from that era in my life is the memory of my first moral dilemma. My parents had taken me to meet my great grandmother who lived in San Francisco. The apartment was very small. My mother was ironing across the room, but she had laid me down for a nap. Apparently, I wasn't ready to settle down, especially with her in the room distracting me, so I kept chattering away to her. To be honest, she didn't seem to be paying all that much attention to me, but she would murmur something in my general direction every once in awhile.
At one point, I told her, "Mama, I'm thirsty - can I have some water?" It never occurred to me that this request would be denied, but my mother seemed a little put out with me as she turned and said, "Melanie, now you listen here. I am going to leave this room for a minute, and don't you DARE get out of that bed." "Yes m'am," I spouted, very obediently, and flounced myself back down as she glided out of the room.
A moment later, I saw her hand appear in the doorway - just her hand. In her hand was a glass of a clear liquid that I determined was my water. This disembodied hand placed the glass just inside the doorway, across the room, on a small table, and then the hand dissappeared. But I knew that was my mother's hand, and I knew that was my glass of water.
Now I was stumped. Her instructions to me had been very clear - Don't get out of the bed for ANYTHING. And yet - yet, she brought me my water. Did she put it across the room as some sort of test? Was it to see how obedient I was? Was it to see if I had enough sense to determine right and wrong? I was so thirsty - surely my mother wouldn't be cruel enough to taunt me with that gleaming glass of cool water.
Finally, I decided she had brought the water to me, and probably snuck it inside the door not to wake me, since I had been being so incredibly quiet and well behaved that surely she thought I was asleep. Oh, how guilty I felt, though, as my feet hit the cool wood floor and I tiptoed across the room. The closer I got to the water, the faster I tiptoed. I grabbed the glass and gulped the liquid down.
It wasn't water! It was foul, it burned, it stank, and it's chemical fumes stunned me. I dropped the glass and screamed. My mother and her grandmother ran into the room, and when my mother saw the glass on the floor, smelled the fumes, and saw me standing there howling and spitting, she turned in horror to her grandmother and cried, "Oh, no - my baby just drank AMMONIA!"
My mother had brought that glass into the room to clean something - she had never even heard me ask for water. She had placed the glass across the room thinking that it was out of my reach - and never dreaming that I would touch it.
My immediate thought, as my mother swooped me up, crying, and my great grandmother ran about the room frantically imploring, "Watch the glass, watch the glass!" was that I was in big, big trouble.
This had definitely been some sort of test - and I had failed miserably.
I don't remember what happened after that but my parents have told me that my father made me drink two raw eggs. How he got a two year old to do that is beyond me.
But then, I have always been a daddy's girl.
