This will be the book jacket cover photo of my memoirs.
It features my chicken legs (so labeled by Kevin-Michael Dueitt in third grade), Megan’s rusty bike, and the serene Buttercup.
Megan must have taken this picture, aiming for something else entirely - she was awfully little for her age. This picture reminds me of all those things I might forget otherwise. Like how the backyard at the old house never quite took to the squares of carpet grass my dad planted. Part of the ground was tamed in neat, uniform plushness, but there were always unruly cowlicks of crabgrass, stickers, and stinging nettles. Those nettles were hop-on-one-foot-and-screech bad. You’d take one wrong step and have raised bumps on your ankles for three days. Megan would dart for Mama’s aloe vera in the flower bed and tear off a piece. It was more fun to tear up another plant in some kind of retaliation than it actually was soothing.
I used to be pigeon-toed. Before some kids at school pointed it out, I thought at least my feet were tolerable. Then the revelation. Even they were problematic, joining a litany of maladies: stick-straight hair and milk chocolate freckles and chicken legs and a total lack of coordination and confusion about directions and the inability to tie shoelaces and so on. Rollerskating straightened my feet and made my calves bigger. I still have kinky clusters of hair left behind by an impulsive junior high perm. My freckles adjust their color with the seasons.
The one time the gate was left open, and the dog ran for Buttercup, I couldn’t forget that. I’d never known a rabbit to make noise, but that shrillest of screams was unforgettable. It’s the sound, I guess, of something completely innocent and beautiful endangered. An assault on something sacred, like growing up before you’re ready without the luxury of ever forgetting how.
great photo.
Thank you, kind sir.