I remember sitting in the old kitchen chairs at the house on Black Bear Drive. They where a scratchy 70's beige; the kind of color that a kid my age would consider a bad yellow. Ten years later the padding sewn inside would start to creep out the stitches after ten thousand games of pretend-mountain-hiker and boat-in-the-sea. The rules to these games were adjustable and were most often adjusted by me, the eldest. I liked(still like) winning and knowing. The plot of these games, however original they began, always turned out to be some sort of escape. Escape from The Sea Monster, from The Abominable Snow Man, from Mom With the Vacuum. We always made it. (Though there were times that MWtV prevailed and we were banned to the out of doors to make way for Clean.) Still, my sister Bailey and I were quite the heroines. We would dangle on the precipice of make-believe danger until our littlest sibling, Maddie, would be close to tears in fear and angst over our make-believe safety.
But I made it through, all pretend appendages still intact... Though, what if Maddie was right? I just wonder sometimes if I were ever truly at risk, of losing something. She was always so scared for us during the cliff-hanging climax of our adventures; so breathless and teary-eyed.
There are those nervous dreams where you try with all your might to get a message across, your mouths opening and closing like unsatisfied goldfish. No sound coming out.
Does child deal with more than we/he understands during his hour of afternoon play? Our old chairs now sit in the kitchen of our new house, faithful runes remaining from the earliest years of the family. Our own little Easter Island. The rules of the games they played their parts in are long since mist among the runes - fuzzy memories we bring out and polish with talk until a film covers the clearest parts. We laugh at ourselves. We have lost nothing, we think.
But maybe we are wrong.
Two doors down the neighbor girl makes a fort in her living room, shadows creeping through the table top draped over chairs.
