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Bringing My Own Words

Shelly, aka The Online Diarist Formerly Known As Jessa, has a section on her site called Bring Your Own Words. The first page reads, in part:

the following pages are full of pictures from the early part of my life. they all evoke baskets full of stories when i look at them. and they make me wonder what kind of stories i’d imagine if i didn’t know the details to go with the pictures. consider this an invitation to see what stories these pictures tell you.

I looked through the photographs twice, and the two titled “cliff dwelling” fascinated me. I kept thinking about them, and the first line from Dar Williams’ song “Pompeii” kept going through my head:

I am thinking about the woman in a century of peace
on a bright mosaic she is washing on her knees

and I wondered if she wrote that song after seeing a drawing or painting and letting it inspire her, weaving a story around what she saw. So, after putting it off for days and being afraid I wouldn’t do a good job, I finally sat down this morning with Arvo Pärt’s Te Deum playing in the background and wrote the story I saw behind those two photographs.

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Cliff Dwelling

Isn’t this supposed to look smaller? I thought I was going to feel like the proverbial giant, carefully stepping around and over the buildings and streets of my childhood. That’s what everyone says happens, anyway. In the books I read.

Instead, this exhibit in the Natural Museum Of History (Replica Of Cliff Dwelling Found In Southern New Mexico) towers over me in a way it didn’t at all when I was eight and here with my mother and sister. Nicole, who went on to an illustrious career as a research scientist, absolutely would not believe that we had not mysteriously traveled into the dust and sand of the real cliff dwelling, would not believe that the pottery and clothing inside were props, nothing more. She stood with one foot on the exhibit’s edge and one on the floor of the museum and said proudly, “Momma! Look, look, I’m in two different times!”

Today I’m in two different times too. My eight year old self, that bundle of dark scowls and the occasional tentative smile, is yelling, “Nicole, it’s not real, stupid!” while the me I am today is thinking that allowing people to walk all over the exhibit is a lawsuit waiting to happen, the me I am today is marveling at how well it’s held up over the years.

That day, years ago, I turned away and pretended to study the sign detailing where the original dwelling was found when my mother pulled her camera out of the bag she carried with her everywhere. One of those bags that seems to contain everything the world could possibly need, when you’re eight. Kleenex, an endless supply of quarters, a first aid kit, coloring books, crayons, even scotch tape. I often wish for that bag, for the comfort of knowing that whatever I need is right there with me. My mother stepped down off of the exhibit, laboring a little because her back was hurting, and said in her low voice, “Excuse me,” to the elderly couple passing. They looked like they’d just walked off the set of a tv movie about grandparents. My mother asked if they’d mind taking a photograph of the three of us. They smiled, nodded, took the camera and then whispered instructions to each other on how to use it while my mother gently posed us. “Here, Nicky, hop up onto this ledge. Sweetie, you go on the other ledge.” I hauled myself up, rolling my eyes for the benefit of anyone who might be passing by and think I was enjoying myself, and watched as the grandparenty couple found the right button and pushed it as my mother was stepping up beside the ledge where Nicole sat. Click. Picture taken. My mother turned and smiled. “Okay, everyone, say cheese!” I felt embarrassed for everyone; my mother, the couple, my sister clutching her new orange poncho as if it were her only possession in the world. I said “Cheese!” so heartily that even Nicole looked at me strangely, and the couple earnestly pressed the focus button, having lost track of correct one.

In an uncharacteristic urge recreate the past, I’ve brought my own Polaroid camera with me on this journey into my childhood. Yesterday when I asked Nicole to come on the four hour drive to the city we grew up in she said no, that she and Brian were planning to go apartment hunting. It’s a shame. I would have liked her to be here, I would have liked to stand here and tell her all about how she thought it was real, how I wished I’d thought it was real too. The first couple that passes the exhibit is eerily similar to the grandparenty couple. They walk faster and look at the floor when I say, “Hi there.” I realize I’ve frightened them and back away, mutter an apology.

A man about my age, bearing the trademark harried look of the weekend father, a disposable camera in one hand and a small child in tow in the other stops in front of the exhibit. “Peter,” he says wearily, sadly. “Peter, look at the nice…uh…” He glances at the sign. “The nice cliff dwelling.” The little boy stares at it dutifully.

I step forward. “It’s okay for kids to play in it,” I say. “I mean, in case you didn’t know.”

The man blinks at me. “Oh. Thanks.”

“Would you mind taking a photo of me? I was –” in the midst of launching into the story of why I’ve come here, I stop and offer my camera instead. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

He takes the camera and nods. “Sure.”

I sit quickly in front of the same ledge I’d sat on at eight, too tall now to fit there, and he takes the picture as I’m pushing my glasses up on the bridge of my nose. Disconcerted, I stand up and thank him.

More than anything, I want to squat next to the little boy and whisper, “This is real. If you step up onto the sand you travel back into the past.” More than anything.