Upper Rooms

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1. I love this picture. If I didn’t have pets, I’d love to live in one of those apartments in an old building, over a store.

   When I was a little kid, we lived in an apartment over a grocery store. It wasn’t like these, ornate. It was an old wood building, painted white. It’s since been torn down. I was 4 or maybe barely 5 when this story happened.

   We didn’t have a refrigerator, but had an ice box. The ice man used to come and bring a big block of ice. I would sit on the front steps and watch him grab the ice with this tool that had two sharp hook like things. Then he’d carry it up the stairs and put it in our ice box. If there was anything left of the old ice block, it’d go into the sink to melt.

   We didn’t have a bath tub. Our bathroom was just a toilet closet. The toilet was one that had a chain that hung down that you pulled the chain to flush.

   I would stand at this back window with a glass of water to brush my teeth.

   We didn’t have a bath tub. But my parents bought a big metal circular tub that would get put in the middle of the kitchen when we’d bathe. I know my mother must have bathed as she was a clean person, but I don’t remember ever seeing her bathe there. But I remember my father sitting in that tub and laughing as he bathed. When I look back, I recognize that my father could accept his lot in life at any given moment with humor and grace.

   One time someone dumped a big pile of ashes in the vacant lot on the corner. Oh how I wanted to play in them, so bad. But we were going someplace. My mother had already left. My father got me ready in my little light colored dress and pointed at me and said, “DON’t GO PLAY IN THE ASHES.” I told him I wouldn’t.

   Then I went downstairs, right to the corner, and the ashes were calling me. It was too much to resist. I played in the ashed. My father finally found me sitting right in the middle of them, covered head to toe in soot.

   He was SO MAD. LOL I still remember it. He was yelling all the way back upstairs. I was crying. He took my clothes off, filled up the tub, and held me upside down to wash my hair. Then he had to change the water to give me another bath.

   But I tell you, if I was back there again, I just might play in the ashes again. As I recall, the experience of sitting in a big pile of ashes was worth getting hollered at. They were so soft, so very soft. It felt good to rub them on my arms and sift them through my fingers. Probably not a healthy thing to do, but my goodness, I have never forgotten it.

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