Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Gauze
In childhood, in dreams, there was always a different world, a safe place: a kid-sized door in the back of a closet leading to a toy-filled, sunlit room; a gingerbread village hidden among foothills that formerly hosted only chaparral scrub; a turn from a desolate road leading to lush grassy meadows and laughing children.
Sometimes I think that’s where our notions of heaven come from. Populate those landscapes with dead relatives and voila, there you are. You’re safe, you’re warm, you’re with people who love you.
Sometimes I wish I could pull away the gauze that keeps me from seeing it here on Earth.
D.
Awww, Doug. C’mon out to the High Desert for a visit. We’re building a Spiritual Retreat out here on our 40 acres of scrub. The desert breeze will blow the gauze away.
I used to believe that my grandmother’s house (where I lived for a year while my mother was finishing her degree and couldn’t deal with three children) had a turret that was accessible through her fur closet (the fur closet was real). Now I think maybe that was the access to the attic, because I’m pretty sure there was a small door there in the cedar panels. I also used to believe that I could fly, but only at my grandmother’s house and only about six feet off the ground.
I’m still sad that my grandparents sold the house and moved to Monterey, where they bought basically the same house, but not as nice (less land, no pool, no laundry chute, and no fur closet). So guess that house is my Rosebud…
We do have a secret hiding room you enter from the back of a closet in the playroom. Only after I noticed my teenaged sons disappearing when their girlfriends were visiting did I realize what was happening. To all those out there who still are raising teenagers, god bless you.