I spent most of my tenth summer in the watermelon grove of Mr McNealy's
farm. The farm was on a south facing hill in a small cove that
sheltered it from the storms that frequently rocked the rest of the
shoreline. The space was both open and secluded at the same time and
perhaps it was this paradoxical bridging of opposites that appealed
to me. Mr McNealy himself was not encouraging of my presence but nor
did he chase me off like he did to the groups of older boys who
gathered there to smoke the cigarettes they had stolen from their
parents' purses or nightstands. Perhaps he was able to see the
reverence I felt to the space and understood the fundamental level of
importance the watermelon patch held for me. It was holy,
a last refuge of magic and wonder during a time when I felt all doors
closing around me. There are no particular events that stand out
about the time I spent there, what stays with me is a specific
feeling of slow inevitable transition. All across my life revelations
were exploding around me like fireworks, lighting up glimpses of a
world so much bigger than the simplistic models I had built in my
head from pieces from childhood books and television shows, worlds of
make believe, fairies and elves, that rewarded the good and punished
the bad. But I was starting to see the strings moving the stories
from the shadows, seeing the real world injustice and frustrations
these stories were built to hide. The magical fairies grew up and got
jobs, the paradise was lost. I felt stupid for believing in
children's stories and angry at all those who had let me. My parents
became the fallen gods of a make believe world. I had a curfew of
nighttime which I would stretch as far as a could, waiting until the
sky was partly dark and the first stars already visible before trudging begrudgingly back home. My mother would invariably be
waiting in the kitchen with supper almost ready. She was a strong
lady in all regards, and her strength supported her positive attitude
amidst many difficulties and in the face of my newly darkened
outlook. She and dad had split two years prior and we moved twice
before she bought a house near the ocean and went back to school to
study linguistics. Her optimism was what carried us through that
phase of life, but sometimes it felt to me like her positivity only
highlighted the confusion and anger that I was learning to carry. I
loved my mother but that love often was buried beneath the confusion
and jumble of emotions I would feel upon leaving the watermelon
grove. She would always greet me in the same way, she would say
hello, tell me dinner was almost ready and then ask a variation of
the same question, “So, did you ever see a whale with a polkadot
tail?,” “So, did you ever see a cat wearing a hat?,” “So, did
you ever see a mango dancing the tango?.” I'm not sure when exactly
this started or where it came from and I never asked. I never even
asked her to stop, even though at times it was infuriating, an
attempt to baby me in order to stop the avalanche of angst that was
quickly starting to define puberty and adulthood. Usually I would
head for my room without responding. Now, after many years, I better
understand some of what she was saying to me. I regret it took so
long but she must have known from her own life that transitions of
understanding take time, that these concepts are difficult things to
put into words and I was not in a place to listen. Now I can see that
just as the world was bigger than my childhood view of heros and
villains, so was it also bigger than my gloomy adolescent ideas of
injustice and responsibility. The mind has room for both views and
many more. She taught me that creativity and playfulness are not
restricted to the young, they are always available, although maturity
can make them harder to embrace. But everyday, like it was nothing,
my mother would reach through space and time to bring
back a silly little rhyme just to show me how easy it was.
