Arrow

My parents say my first word was ‘Arrow’, the name of our little white basset hound. I take shameful pride in knowing I first spoke to my doggy, whose lips pulled back in a smile whenever she panted, whose tail, instead of wagging back and forth, made great arching circles. Daddy said one day she would lift off with that helicopter tail and fly on up to heaven. I suppose he was subtly preparing us for when her time came. And when it did, we accepted it well, knowing that our little Arrow was surely even more angelic in Heaven.

Diatomaceous Earth

When the flea infestation began, we didn’t know quite what to do. So we pretended it was nothing. But Frolic kept itching and the little red bites increasingly freckled Mother’s legs. In a delayed counterattack, a fine dusting of white powder was applied to every last horizontal surface, including the desktop keyboard, the insides of my sneakers, and the dog’s sleeping body. Mother told us it was diatomaceous earth, meant to naturally dehydrate the fleas’ bodies. Months after the fleas died out and swollen bites subsided, the chalky white fallout of this war was left as evidence of their occupation.  

Delicacy

When the chicken was taken from the onion-filled frying pan, and the water in the rice was just about all absorbed, Mother would announce “dinner’s ready!” And Daddy, reading, would look up and shout back, “but is it really?” Mother wouldn’t answer and instead hurried to finish setting the table and filling the water glasses. Meanwhile the onions still sat, frying, getting crispier. When dinner was truly ready, we would line up at the counter and serve ourselves, “cafeteria style”. After the rice, chicken and gravy were dolloped onto our plates, we would reach our favorite delicacy, the blackened onions.

Carry a Tune

From the yearly band concerts she gathered we could play trumpet, but Grandma really wanted to know if we could “carry a tune,” hoping that more than our curls resembled Shirley Temple. We’d shake our heads. Disappointed, she’d move on to Daddy, could he hold a note? We would tell her of the made-up song Daddy would belt out in a near operatic voice each time we crossed over the Point of Rocks Bridge. A love song to Virginia as we drove in, a dirge as we headed north back home. Happy to imagine her son singing, Grandma would smile.

Stop

When I was littler, my family routinely accused me of not comprehending the meaning of ‘stop’. To accommodate my allegedly limited vocabulary, they would shout “opposite of go” at me, hoping, fruitlessly, that I would then understand. But ignorance had nothing to do with it, I was a victim of youngest child syndrome, a natural annoyance. I tried to fight it by vowing to never again be such a terrible bother. But that never lasted long. And I certainly didn’t even try last June when my dad asked me to stop. I just “forgot” the meaning, and got married anyway.

Heat

Without central air, my family’s home is cooled by our one air conditioner and a small collection of window fans. But in my room, the fan's cord will not reach from the only outlet to my window. Logically, one would use a small extension cord, but mother forbade it, fearing sparking, fire, and ruin. So I did without. But one night in the height of summer, I awoke and, without thinking, slowly poured my glass of water over my face, allowing it to flow down my shoulders, onto my pillow. Repeating this throughout the night, I was cool at last.

Homemade

Growing up with a hired cook in Nana’s kitchen, B never learned to prepare a meal. And since her disinterest in being a housewife gave no motivation to learn, she produced children who were similarly inept chefs. The homemade cakes shared on birthdays remind us of the family’s culinary failings as our dessert either is made with rotten milk, contaminated by a fall into the sink, irrevocably stuck in the pan, or inexplicably flavored like Play-Doh. But when we do serve a store-bought cake, if we manage to avoid smashing it or letting it melt, the family seems vaguely disappointed.

Disqualification

After running, shooting, and swimming, Libby completed the tetrathlon in the showjumping ring atop Cookie, our haflinger pony whose dazzling yet rotund beauty is no reflection of her personality. Following the designated course, they cantered steadily in swooping arches, breaking stride only to runout, refuse, or just plain crash through each fence. After their disqualification,  Libby took revenge by staying seated as Cookie arched her back to pee, instead of standing in her stirrups to offer comfort, as is customary. Though many years have passed, Libby continues this senseless punishment, still trying to avenge the honor she lost that day.

Puppy Grass

Without proper knowledge of taxonomy, we coined the name “puppy grass” for that wonderfully tender and leafy vegetation which our basset puppies were so fond of. Our frequent walks through the nearby woods with the latest litter of bassets pups would always end at the spot on the trail where the canopy opens, allowing the sunlight to shine down on this little patch of puppy grass. As the puppies romped around us, we rolled through the grass, arms pinned to our sides, steamrolling the stems flat along the ground, loving that this was just what puppy grass was made for.

Men with Chainsaws

When the trails overflow with pricker bushes and fallen trees, the hunt organizes trail clearing days. Before heading out with our modest loppers, Daddy reminds us to “never trust a man with a chainsaw.” And so, as we wander the hunting country eating wild raspberries, we keep our distance from the power tool bearing men, the suburban fathers, lawyers, and undertakers, who happily grasp at this opportunity to prove their manliness. There are, of course, the plumbers and firefighters who have proved themselves qualified, but because we know Coors Lite and chainsaws shouldn’t mix, we stay away from them, too.

Monster Encycolpedia

Cousin Abby’s crayon drawings reflect her mind’s current obsession. It started as Pooh’s Heffalump Movie inspired her to build, or at least draw, a better heffalump trap. She sketched them for years, her creativity rekindled with each rerun. But eventually her ideas ran out, and she moved on to designing clothes. But her thoughts of becoming a designer quickly dissipated once the monsters took over. These mythological creatures she saw on television translated into the drawings filling the twin binders labeled The Monsters in My Head: Volume One and Volume Two. We await her fully diagrammed and alphabetized Monster Encyclopedia.

Graduation

Four hours before my classmates lined up on the football field turf to receive their diplomas, I was at the courthouse in Lake Placid, getting my marriage license. Mother attended graduation anyway, refusing to understand why I wasn’t there. Besides prioritizing my wedding above graduation, I was averse to graduation ceremonies ever since my pre-school teachers paraded us around in caps, gowns, and those New Year’s Eve 2000 glasses. Remembering this embarrassment, I promised myself I wouldn't be forced into those absurd clothes again. And so, two days later and four hundred miles away, I wore a wedding dress instead.

Car Following

When we were too young to foxhunt on our ponies, Mother would pile us into the red van to follow by car. As she patrolled highways in random anticipation of the fox’s path, we sat in the backseat without anything to do. Boredom-induced giggles or fights usually ended with Mother sentencing us to ten minutes of cleaning. Though our miserable efforts to collect empty cracker sleeves never lasted more than a few minutes, Mother, intently listening for hounds atop her running board perch, never enforced these orders. So we’d resume our silliness, waiting out this four hour drive to nowhere.

Lemonade

Under Cousin Sean’s business leadership, we started a lemonade stand at Nana’s beach house one summer. Shirtless and scowling, we were an unattractive bunch, but nice middle-aged women were guilted into buying our over-sweetened drinks anyway. Our earnings totaling up near twelve dollars, the mathematical dilemma of the money’s division arose. We had two options, Sean told us, either we each get three dollars, or, dividing the cash by family, we'd get six dollars per household. Opting for the bigger number, we took the six dollars, not catching on to Sean’s trickery. We didn’t have much use for money anyhow.

Black River Picnic

Emerging from the Pottersville Deli with lunch, we drive south along the Black River to the McCan Mill Bridge. Once there, we perch on our usual picnic bench (the ledge of cement under the bridge) and let our bare feet dangle in the river. And though the water on our toes flows onward, perhaps all the way to the ocean, the river as a whole remains the same. Forever it will be where we learned to swim, where the hounds cool off after a lively rabbit hunt, and the best place around to picnic on buttered hard rolls and Yoo-hoo.

Soiled

As middle schoolers have earlier obligations than those of us in elementary school, Libby was bussed out an hour before Sarah and I. With this extra time, we were given chores to occupy us. So after we’d scrounge together lunch money, Hope’s stall beckoned. Methodically moving the soiled straw from stall to manure bucket, we would finish up by hoisting the overfilled bucket over our heads into the manure spreader. Swatting the overflow from our curls, we would trudge down the hill to the bus stop and board the bus, our cow’s filth compacted in the treads of our sneakers.

Secret Revenge

Actions in violation of Sarah’s unspoken behavioral guidelines were punishable by “secret revenge”. So when I’d overstep my bounds, Sarah would suppress her spitting instinct and instead calmly inform me that retribution would be forthcoming. Her justice was administered under the guise of bad luck, meant to make me guess if my missing favorite tee shirt or my burnt-out light bulb was chance’s doings, or Sarah’s. Though her psychological warfare may have been empty threats meant to make me uneasy, it’s likely that every bit of misfortune I’ve experienced has been calculated and executed as part of Sarah’s secret revenge.

Civil War Cuisine

Flour, water, and salt. This was all we needed for a filling meal when the cabinets could offer no better. We each were taught the recipe for hardtack in Mrs. Webb’s fifth grade social studies class as she told us how soldiers from both the Union and Confederacy munched on these little baked bricks of dough. And so did we. When our hunger demanded it, we poured, mixed, and baked ourselves up some Civil War cuisine. The leftover crumbs acting to alert the parents of our imminent malnutrition, mother would take us out to shop for some twenty-first century sustenance.

Marble Warfare

Upon receiving a little mesh bag of matching marbles each year on my birthday, I would reverently pour the new recruits into the metal canister to join their fellow marbles. Though they tried to integrate, their shared spots, stripes or sparkles still identified which batch they came from. These visual distinctions inevitably fostered the formation of clans whose rivalries transformed the hallway carpet to a battleground. We consider ourselves lucky that they never crossed paths with “the budgets,” Daddy’s old marble tribe named for the used cardboard box he stored them in whose great staircase migrations earned them great honor.

Knives

Consisting almost entirely of mismatched butter knives, our kitchen drawers are essentially child-safe. As we saw at onions, our knife block sits unused, fully equipped and yet somehow forgotten. In this neglect, it once sought revenge, sending its most daggerish blade sailing past my head as I searched for something with which to open the bag of chicken feed. We concluded the knife had lodged oddly among the other silverware and, as the drawer was opened, its release sent it airborne. Though none of us moved it from the knife block to the drawer, we choose to accept that story.

Synchrony

My eastward facing window daily blessed my room with the morning’s sunlight. Tigger, Putin, Frolic and Surplice would periodically frequent my bed to share in the warmth, with the cats taking their place on the windowsill while the dogs cuddled up alongside me. With Frolic’s head beside mine on the sun-bathed pillow, I would sometimes hush my breathing to listen to hers. Trying to synchronize our breaths, I would adopt the tranquility of her prolonged inhales and subtle exhales. As our breathing aligned, I felt complete peace, laying half-asleep in the sunlight, living in perfect synchrony with my beloved Frolic.

Bananas

Having confidence in her first impressions, Libby distrusted bananas after throwing one up at age two. So despite Cousin Sean’s constant offerings of banana-flavored Jell-o and toothpaste, she refused any contact with them. But for a couple months when she was eighteen, bananas were all she ate, sliced, frozen, and with caramel drizzled over them, until she became sickened by them once more. In England, she feasted solely on bacon and cheese sandwiches on extra thick bread slices. Since then, she has proceeded through the nut family, cashews, pecans, peanuts, macadamia nuts, almonds. For now she dines on sunflower seeds.

Turtlenecked Monster

Daddy casts the blanket into the air, holding the bottom corners so that it falls perfectly over me. After wedging the blanket tightly under my sides, down to my feet, he switches off the hallway light and returns downstairs. We all wait, frozen. The thumping starts. The monster, its head hidden within its turtleneck, clomps into our rooms, derangedly mussing up our blankets as it wiggles its fingers into our armpits. As we writhe in ticklish terror, we never once think of those other monsters, the ones in the closets and under the bed, that seem to plague other children.

Soybean Dolphins

Summer hunting is plagued by delinquent basset hounds hunting after everything they ought not. But it’s such a shame to end that harmonious cry, what you’ve waited to hear all hot summer long. So we hunt the soybean fields, where we can watch for deer, while the hounds, drowned in the green, rely only on their noses to hunt rabbits. Frustrated by their blindness, the bassets leap through the sea of stalks, breach the surface, and look about wildly before splashing back down beneath the canopy. Only then we can see the noble hunters, our beautiful flock of soybean dolphins.

Water Obstructions

The rocks dug deep into the sandy stream bottom were excavated and piled high on the bank. Using this stash of stones, we created a trifecta of dams for the water to navigate. After elongating the width to prevent errant channels from detouring around the structures, we would watch as the silt built up and the stream widened. As we made these observations, we made sure to always refer to the dams as “water obstructions” for our collective sensitivity to profanity precluded us from speaking the swear word’s homonym. I bet the men building Hoover Dam spoke just as cautiously.

Just Fred

As is customary in the horse show world, horses are given extravagant names which have no bearing on what they're called. So the horse known in the barn as Gus, is actually Ambassador Z. Like a proper farm animal, my pony Fred had only one name. So when the snot-nosed horse girl asked after Fred’s “show name”, she became horrified that he didn’t have one, that he was just “Fred,” no more no less. In mockery of people like her, my family began concocting outlandish names to bestow on Fred or, as he's now called, “Golden Thunder on The March.”

Word Count

In an effort to curb my senseless chatter, Sarah would tell me of life’s word count, how each person is given a certain amount of words to speak in her life and if she talks too much when she’s young, she'll go prematurely mute. Each time I was reminded of this biological law, great shame would pass over me as I thought of my reckless use of language. Like a sinner on Sunday, I would repent my carelessness, vowing silence. Though each of my countless conversions lasted less than an hour, I hope I’ve saved enough to verbally retire on.

Tonight's the Night!

When I was little, I decided it would be great fun to not go to sleep and instead continue to play. At those times, I would announce to Libby and Sarah just before they went to bed “tonight’s the night!” In response, Libby and Sarah would ignore me, favoring their pillows to hours more of play. So I’d sleep too, rejected. Since those nights never turned out to be the night, I became like the doomsayers, predicting an event which never comes. Some night, maybe, a worthy cause will draw me from these blankets. But tonight is not that night.

Cave Dweller

In preparation for tomorrow’s hunt, I bathe Fred in the wash stall with the doors closed against the cold. Though the early winter dusk is draining the light from the room, I keep scrubbing, not noticing. The lights stay off. Sarah approaches, but without the glimmer of light so common to inhabited places, she is surprised to find us standing absurdly in this dark room as water drips from the dirty ceiling. She says I look like a peasant maid in the basement of the castle, cleaning the princess’s white pony. Or like a cave dweller. One or the other.

Little Ladies

As the parents worked about the kennel, they put Libby, Sarah, and I in the puppy yard to keep us contained and within sight. Playing contentedly within our chain-link fence playpen, we would nickname puppies things like “Floppy Ears” and “Puffy Wuffy.” But as we did all these sweet little girl things, we methodically purged the kennel of disease without disgust or remorse with two rocks: one that stayed flat on the ground and received the sacrificial ticks while the other was used to smash them. In comparison to Moyra, who just used her fingernails, we were civilized little ladies.

Friend

Caleigh and I played at trouble all through elementary and middle school.

In high school, Nermeen and I sought out sunny days and ice cream.

College has yet to give me a friend, but I am not looking either. If a worthy girl is there, she will make herself known to me. If not, I have everything I need in Alec, the best friend I’ll ever have. And, even better, will always have. We’re always together here on top of the Blue Ridge Mountains in our little brick home. We have total contentment together, as friends, as husband and wife.

Home Records

During the long walks with the basset hounds from the Fales’ basset kennel to the faraway river, I would inevitably tire towards the end and give the burden of my weight to Libby as she readily took me up upon her back. As I got older, I would increasingly make it farther on my own feet, until I finished the whole walk by myself. Libby and Sarah commemorated these feats as “home records.” Remembering their constant efforts to carry me and their praise at my grown-up self-sufficiency, I am grateful that they tended so well to me, their little sister.