Images From Childhood (no story, sorry Carol)

The sandbox was all the way at the end of the backyard, nestled beside the rundown horse stable in the back corner. The wooden fort Grandpa built us before I could remember dominated the right-hand side of the sandbox and off its second story came the top of a swing set, reaching down and posting in the sand. The sand was full of treasures and holes. The eggs we once buried are probably still there. All of us played there together, digging into the soft sand with our overgrown fingernails and filling the cracks in our callused heels with little grains of earth. Maybe we started when the sun came up or when the chores were done or when Mom was busy, and always we started whenever another sister was with us. And when were we done? Never really, but we would take breaks--in the middle of the sand village war or the pioneer pine cone gathering fest, a loud knock would reverberate from the very front of the backyard, where mom pounded on the kitchen window to call us in for dinner. Then the roles would swap, village defenders became enemies surrendering, pioneers became wild indians, and we would flee to the back door and around the dogs to wash off because Mom knocked and told us to.

I was always the first one up. The sun would come in through our open window, streaming light over our rumbled bed spreads and past the red carpet, hitting our large mirror doors on the closet. The Looney Toons on our wallpaper seemed to dance in the reflecting sunlight, and I wiggled my toes beneath the blue tie quilt Grandma made out of old flour sacks. This is where I mastered the art of silent travel, for I would fold my blankets under my body to tidily make my bed without waking Summer, then tiptoe to the door and into the hall. Silently past Jamie and Charina's room, around the corner and a leap across the hallway intersecting Mom and Dad's door to keep them asleep too. I would switch the bathroom light on only after I had carefully closed the door and even when I was done, I wouldn't flush to ensure the silence in the house remained. Then down the seven steps while clinging to the handrail Dad crafted himself, slipping onto the tile floor where the same sun from my room was now greeting the kitchen. Then around the final corner till the cereal cupboard was in sight and I would look--only to jump back, startled by my silent father, sitting at the table and quietly reading the paper, softly munching his raisin bran while the rest of the house slept on. So that's where I really learned it, I guess.

I think the rooms in the Meadowland Stake Center all look the same, but I could still point to the exact room where I had this Sunday School class. The same people where there with me then as were there when I was 17--Kyle MacGill and his brother Korey, Taryn Smith, Ryan Jensen and Rachel Guasp. There room smelled like the generic cleaning solution you can buy in bulk, and the cold air from air conditioning blew through the room as constant as the Wyoming winds. THere was a big, black chalkboard on the wall, set out against the cinder blocks painted white which constituted the whole building. My teacher was a woman, and she sat next to round table, brown like the chapel's pews. Propped in the chalk tray was a poster, a picture of a large forest with lots of sunlight and green leaves. Kneeling on the floor in this forest was a boy in peasant's clothes, and there were two people that looked like angels floating above him. She said that was God? This boy asked a question and God came to answer it? It sounded familiar, and from the first time I heard it, I liked it.