At first...slowly, sluggishly...sound somewhere...rain...yes that's it, the insistent rat-a-tat-tat of rain beads slapping against the bedroom window...can't see them because it's infinitely black under here...here under my Saturday morning covers from where I intend never again to rise...at least never on a cloudy-black Saturday when the rain and thunder and falling leaves outside make noble this cocoon inside...with enough dedication, perhapswhile the cocoon can become a castle whose drawbridge forever denies access to the world.
The mind travels back...even hidden inside castles...to all the shes it has known and loved before...Mom's brown darting eyes on Saturday mornings just like this...up and about a spic-and-span bungalow...now spinning in a bacon-and-eggs warm kitchen after breakfast...the object of her affections the German Chocolate Cake she's making for tonight's guests...you get to lick the spoon while together we listen to the radio...a radio world whose people and places and plots are soon to become real...child becomes adolescent...Barbara, Rosemary, Judy, Peggy, Bonnie...mothers are security, girls are sensuality...Sister Mary Ursala belongs in there too...but not exactly female...more fidelity...nuns bring devotion...girls, desire...you remember it all so well...under the castle covers here, the mind tries to unravel whose role was the more enduring...you remember them all with equal warmth ...feeling warmth in a cold world can't be bad...too bad the cold rain and wind and leaves refuse to go.
As the mind travels, there are also hes along the way...the ones I'd look to as they scrambled up the thick oaks and elms which cherished our leafy city blocks...always up where I couldn't quite reach...as the years unspool, those differences collapse...now there are assets other than muscles...words and music and ideas flourish after muscles fade...there was Johnny and Tommy, Jim and Bill...gone now, but you remember how your grew together ... explored together...instead of tracking old routes, carved new ones together...Dad of course was the he who defined all the others...migrated here for the American Dream...proved it was real...you never noticed at the time how far and hard he had to travel to make it so...but the quiet strength and gentle courage forever shapes you.
Can't stay under these covers all day...well, maybe all morning...nothing wrong with castles...or drawbridges... especially when yours is shared by the supreme she in your life...right there next to you...and just down the hall, the sweet memories of the three adult children she bore... who have reaffirmed the vintage wisdom: The best thing we do is give them roots and wings.
So someday they too have a castle of their own...
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Whoa, you just had my dream.
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