Thank you to everyone who has supported me through this part of the journey. I know it's not over, but I'm definitely on a new leg of this breast cancer adventure. I understand that my upcoming surgeries will be harder than the one I have already gone through, but I also know that I am tough enough to handle it. I have learned how strong I am. I'm so much more able to handle challenges than I ever imagined. Go me!
Every day, I learn and I grow. Every day is a whole new world of possibilities. Like that little segue?
New Worlds Chapter 6
I had been reading James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for a few days. I was still thinking about all that it took to become a poet and a writer when I replaced the book all gleaming and spotless on the shelf. I had just set it in its spot when Aunt Tootie walked into the room bright and early one morning. I acted casual as though I was just perusing the titles on the shelf. She said nothing about my being up before everyone else. Instead, she told me to put on my prettiest dress, because we were going to take a little trip. I put on my faded blue jumper, a tan button-up blouse, and my tennis shoes with the hole in the toe. Aunt Tootie changed into black tailored pants and a flowing silk blouse the color of persimmon cookies. Then, we set off in Aunt Tootie's melted butter colored Volvo. Uncle Bob always bought Aunt Tootie the safest cars on the market. This one even had seatbelts, but air-conditioning was not yet an option. We rolled down the windows and let our hair blow in the early morning breeze.
"Well do you want to guess where we're going?" Aunt Tootie asked me.
"I can't guess. Where are we going?" I asked.
"Well, first we're going to take Vicky to Grandma Denman's. Then, you and I are going to go shopping to buy you a new dress."
A new dress? I had never had anything that hadn't belonged to Kathryn first. My very own dress!
We talked as we drove along. Aunt Tootie asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
I suppose up until that point, I had never thought about the possibility of choosing what I wanted to be. "I don't know," I answered. "Mom says in a few years I can go with her and Kathryn to pick fruit in the summer, but Daddy says I don't need to, because someday, I'll make someone a good wife."
"I think you'd be a great writer with your imagination. Or maybe, an archaeologist who explores forgotten places. Or how about a scientist who discovers a whole new planet?"
A scientist who discovers new things and makes observations? Well, that sounded OK, but all of that math didn't seem like too much fun, and scientists had to sit around all day doing nothing but looking. If I was going to make discoveries, I wanted to be out living and moving and thinking. No, being a scientist didn't really sound like my kind of job. An archaeologist who digs in the dirt and tracks muddy footprints into ancient tombs and forgotten cities? Sounded messy and dirty and unorganized. No, I didn't think I wanted to be an archaeologist. But a writer like Joyce or Saroyan or even Pearl S. Buck? Me? The thought had never before occurred to me, but I liked the way it sounded. Putting words in order. Organizing sentences. Imagining new people and new places. Making my own worlds. Yes, I would like to be a writer.
We hit the highway and drove the ten miles into the big city of Modesto. It seemed like a big city at the time anwyay. McHenry Street was a bustling metropolis compared to Oakdale. There were people everywhere. Women with shoppping bags walked along the sidewalks. Men in business suits hurried from one office building to another. Cars pulled in and out of shopping center parking lots like ants trouping in and out of anthills. Oh how I longed to explore this place and discover its secrets.
Aunt Tootie parked her car in front of a modern building. It looked like the pictures of New York City skyscrapers that I had seen pictures of in Social Studies books at school -- only it was lying on its side. The building was one long row of white stucco shops glued together with no seams showing. It had perfectly square picture frame windows, and five doors spaced at equal intervals. We went in the second door from the end. In black stenciled letters, the words Carousel Children's Fashions spanned the entire width of the glass door. Inside the shop, cool air filtered in from little silver grates along the tops of the walls. Here, in this world, it wasn't even summer.
We chose a red dress with little pearl buttons running down the front of the bodice, and with a full pleated skirt -- the kind that opens up like an umbrella when you spin in a circle. In my shopping bag, there were also snowy white lace socks, white patent leather Mary Janes, and new underclothes, because Aunt Tootie said there was no reason a lady shouldn't treat herself well from the inside out.
Although the morning had been breezy and Carousel Children's Fashions had been arctic, outside the temperature had soared to over one hundred degrees. Inside the car, we could have roasted a chicken.
We left Modesto in the heat of the day watching wave upon wave of heated air rise from the black tar pavement. Only this time we took the country route. As soon as we hit Claribel Road, Aunt Tootie began to unbutton her blouse. I stared straight ahead trying not to show my shock.
"I don't go much for inconvenience, and right now, this blouse is incovneniencing me to no end. Ugh it's hot!" she said. "Make yourself comfortable sweetheart. There's no one out here to see us in our all together."
I just smiled, nodded, and continued to sing along with Elvis on the radio. No way was I going to ride through the country streets like Alfred Tennyson's Lady Godiva in "Godiva, A Tale of Coventry" (another book I had found on Aunt Tootie's mystical book shelf).
As we passed forests of corn and fields full of cows dressed in their best spotted leather coats, Aunt Tootie in her Cross Your Heart bra and I in my discomfort sang along with the radio each of us with one arm out of the window. My uneasiness grew as we drew close to the stop sign that marks the half way point between Modesto and Oakdale on Calribel Road. There were flashing yellow lights, trucks the size of dinosaurs, and a crowd of men in orange jumpsuits. As we pulled to a very legal stop, Aunt Tootie looked straight ahead, her frazzled braid clinging to her sweat soaked back and her diamond earrings making little rainbow prisms dance along the dashboard. I held my breath until we had cleared the construction site.
Five minutes later, beside a rusted barbed wire fence that protected a leaning silo and a barn with three walls and no roof, Aunt Tootie pulled over and put her shirt back on. She looked at me. I looked at her. Then, the car exploded with laughter. The little Volvo shook and tears rolled down our cheeks.
Aunt Tootie said, "At least I was wearing a bra. It should be perfectly OK for me to go shirtless. At least half of those men back there weren't wearing a shirt. Anyway, it should give them something to talk about for the rest of the day."
Her little speech brought on another explosion of laughter, and we held our sides and hugged each other. As I rode the rest of the way home next to a completely clad Aunt Tootie, my face ached from all of the exercise we had given our smile muscles.