the grates were painted black every two years.
My mother felt a little differently about the Ericsons. She and Mrs.Ericson often canned or made peanut brittle together in the Ericsons’ kitchen while Ruthie and I sat on the floor sewing doll clothes, with Dinah and Rose out on the porch in only shorts, pouring water in and out of various vessels. My mother liked to go over there, and at least went for coffee every morning. Mrs. Ericson had a welcoming manner that my mother appreciated but couldn’t master. She always said, “When I’m home, I’ve got to get things done, even if there are visitors. Elizabeth knows how to relax in her own house.” And then she would shake her head, as if Elizabeth had remarkable powers.
We knew in our very sinews that the Ericsons’ inevitable failure must result from the way they followed their whims. My mother surely knew it with regret, but she knew it all the same. Their farm represented neither history nor discipline, and while they were engaged in training dogs and making ice cream, we were engaged in toiling steadily up a slight incline toward a larger goal. My father would not have said he wanted to be rich, or even that he wanted to own the largest farm in the county or possess the round, impressive number of a thousand acres. He would not have invoked the names of his children or a desire to bequeath to us something substantial. Possibly he would have named nothing at all, except keeping up with the work, getting in a good crop, making a good appearance among his neighbors. But he always spoke of the land his grandparents found with distaste—those gigantic gallinippers, snakes everywhere, cattails, leeches, mud puppies, malaria, an expanse of winter ice skateable, in 1889, from Cabot east, across our land, all the way to Columbus, ten miles away. Although I liked to think of my Davis great-grandparents seeking the American promise, which is only possibilities, and I enjoyed the family joke of my grandfather Cook finding possibilities where others saw a cheat, I was uncomfortably aware that my father always sought impossibility, and taught us, using the Ericsons as his example, to do the same—to discipline the farm and ourselves to a life and order transcending many things, but especially mere whim.
I loved going over to the Ericsons’, and Ruthie was my best friend. One of my earliest memories, in fact, is of myself in a red and green plaid pinafore, which must mean I was about three, and Ruthie in apink shirt, probably not yet three, squatting on one of those drainage-well covers, dropping pebbles and bits of sticks through the grate. The sound of water trickling in the blackness must have drawn us, and even now the memory gives me an eerie feeling, and not because of danger to our infant selves. What I think of is our babyhoods perched thoughtlessly on the filmiest net of the modern world, over layers of rock, Wisconsin till, Mississippian carbonate, Devonian limestone, layers of dark epochs, and we seem not so much in danger (my father checked the grates often) as fleeting, as if our lives simply passed then, and this memory is the only photograph of some nameless and unknown children who may have lived and may have died, but at any rate have vanished into the black well of time.
Of course, I remember this so clearly because we were severely punished for wandering off, for crossing the road, for climbing onto the well grate, though I don’t actually remember the punishment, only the sudden appearance of my mother, in an apron with a yellow Mexican hat appliquéd onto it. Maybe because I knew we were going to be punished, I remember looking at Ruthie’s intent face and her fingers releasing something through the holes of the grate, and feeling love for her.
To go over to the Ericsons’, to laugh at the dogs, to eat the ice cream or a piece of cake, to ride the ponies, to sit too long in Dinah’s closet window seat, was to flirt with danger on the one hand, and to
My mother felt a little differently about the Ericsons. She and Mrs.Ericson often canned or made peanut brittle together in the Ericsons’ kitchen while Ruthie and I sat on the floor sewing doll clothes, with Dinah and Rose out on the porch in only shorts, pouring water in and out of various vessels. My mother liked to go over there, and at least went for coffee every morning. Mrs. Ericson had a welcoming manner that my mother appreciated but couldn’t master. She always said, “When I’m home, I’ve got to get things done, even if there are visitors. Elizabeth knows how to relax in her own house.” And then she would shake her head, as if Elizabeth had remarkable powers.
We knew in our very sinews that the Ericsons’ inevitable failure must result from the way they followed their whims. My mother surely knew it with regret, but she knew it all the same. Their farm represented neither history nor discipline, and while they were engaged in training dogs and making ice cream, we were engaged in toiling steadily up a slight incline toward a larger goal. My father would not have said he wanted to be rich, or even that he wanted to own the largest farm in the county or possess the round, impressive number of a thousand acres. He would not have invoked the names of his children or a desire to bequeath to us something substantial. Possibly he would have named nothing at all, except keeping up with the work, getting in a good crop, making a good appearance among his neighbors. But he always spoke of the land his grandparents found with distaste—those gigantic gallinippers, snakes everywhere, cattails, leeches, mud puppies, malaria, an expanse of winter ice skateable, in 1889, from Cabot east, across our land, all the way to Columbus, ten miles away. Although I liked to think of my Davis great-grandparents seeking the American promise, which is only possibilities, and I enjoyed the family joke of my grandfather Cook finding possibilities where others saw a cheat, I was uncomfortably aware that my father always sought impossibility, and taught us, using the Ericsons as his example, to do the same—to discipline the farm and ourselves to a life and order transcending many things, but especially mere whim.
I loved going over to the Ericsons’, and Ruthie was my best friend. One of my earliest memories, in fact, is of myself in a red and green plaid pinafore, which must mean I was about three, and Ruthie in apink shirt, probably not yet three, squatting on one of those drainage-well covers, dropping pebbles and bits of sticks through the grate. The sound of water trickling in the blackness must have drawn us, and even now the memory gives me an eerie feeling, and not because of danger to our infant selves. What I think of is our babyhoods perched thoughtlessly on the filmiest net of the modern world, over layers of rock, Wisconsin till, Mississippian carbonate, Devonian limestone, layers of dark epochs, and we seem not so much in danger (my father checked the grates often) as fleeting, as if our lives simply passed then, and this memory is the only photograph of some nameless and unknown children who may have lived and may have died, but at any rate have vanished into the black well of time.
Of course, I remember this so clearly because we were severely punished for wandering off, for crossing the road, for climbing onto the well grate, though I don’t actually remember the punishment, only the sudden appearance of my mother, in an apron with a yellow Mexican hat appliquéd onto it. Maybe because I knew we were going to be punished, I remember looking at Ruthie’s intent face and her fingers releasing something through the holes of the grate, and feeling love for her.
To go over to the Ericsons’, to laugh at the dogs, to eat the ice cream or a piece of cake, to ride the ponies, to sit too long in Dinah’s closet window seat, was to flirt with danger on the one hand, and to
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