 The potbellied house with its foundation of round river stone was just a winter stop, but a transition from the mysteries of the Carolina East to the mysteries of the California West for a four-year-old (do people out there savor brook cooled watermelon, juice dripping, as the sun slides away from a sweltery, dusty day?).
JOHN BUERER |
In its productive days, the "barn" behind the house, open ended, shaded a tractor and harrow used to keep weeds down in the orange grove around. Now it seemed a protected place to play.
Old used things lay about. An ice fridge no taller than myself, its foot panels missing, stood by the wall. It was small, but a person my size could squeeze inside, the door solemnly closed by those he hoped to amaze by mysteriously opening it and, escaping the unthinkable dread of his fate, stepping out before his admirers. It's true. I saw it done by older kids.
Actually, I didn't find the door easy to close by myself while curled inside, but I managed it alone to avoid condescending comments from other kids, or worse, laughter if I didn't succeed in freeing myself quickly enough.
I did have a plan. I packaged myself in such a way that one hand could reach the exposed underside of the door, the only place I saw where I might reach opening mechanisms. The missing panels there admitted a faint light and air.
Believe me, I tried, but it was no use. I wasn't to escape. At least not on my own.
I considered hysterics (how deeply a four-year-old thinks), melting into its forboding pool of the unknown, but I saw no way out of the fridge in it. Choosing clarity and patience, rather, I remembered that saint of last resort, Mom. The one so naturally there. The wound tender, dream opener, rescuer, lover of kids. She would set me free, if only she could hear me. I called several times, but my pleas for salvation, muffled by the fridge, didn't reach the ear of Mom. I fancied I could hear a plate click against the sink in the kitchen, and I called again and again.
How should I think about the nature of my perdicament if it were longer term, I thought. I had air, and I supposed it was possible to keep this uncomfortable pretzelization of limbs until dinner time. I could roam the orchard or the desert across the road at will, but with Mom dinner was the final bell, when she would surely come looking for me, her little locked-in sheep. Certainly she would.
Was it the screen door opening I heard? It clapped shut. Yes! Mom was in the yard. I began to call, "Mom! I'm in the barn!" Not that she could hear.
She paused. I could imagine her quizically scanning the yard. Then the sweetest sound to a child's ears, not just his mother's voice, but her calling his name, "Johnny!" She was looking for me! I renewed my cries for redemption. Then, like a spirit, she was in the barn, calling close at hand. "I'm in the refrigerator!" I shouted.
I must have taken on its insensate metal as a new skin, sensing her hand on the door handle, and next I tumbled out to freedom and life.
My experience with the fridge has stayed with me; I've had similar thoughts and have needed to make similar decisions through life. By the measure of some epocs, I'm an old man now. Mom and I grew up in parallel streams, apart much of the time, and yet together as if, in my immature thoughts, the other six siblings were footnotes in our passage.
Against all dreams of an eternal nature, Mom aged. She languished, and we, now men and women with our spouses, children and grandchildren, laid her frail remains in the soil. Yet ocassionally I look down the dusty road she travelled, thoughts of our temporary nature unthinkable in youth now more familiar. What will it be like? How will I end my days? And without realizing it, I'm in the ice fridge once again, a little light and a little air from under the door, joints stiffer now, knowing not only that I'm locked in, but also locked out of a great exciting world to come. Then I realize how much I am waiting to hear my Creator call my name, sense his hand on the door; the Wound Tender, Dream Opener, Rescuer, Lover. And I call, and I listen and wait.
A TRUE STORY.
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