Tag: childhood

I AM EVELYNE. I AM

THE CORNFIELD

1945

Evelyne died when she was five. There in the August cornfield with open blue skies above, her life ended. She was on her back, trying to catch her breath. Each short gasp bringing in the pungent smells of fear, dirt and him. Evelyne struggled as he easily pinned her tiny body between the corn stocks with his teenage frame. She wanted her mother. She wanted him to get off. Her cries were silent and not heard. Not by anyone. Not even the crows casting shadows over them as they scavenged for food.

“Don’t tell your mother, or she’ll spank you hard,” he said zipping up his Levi’s. Evelyne could still hear the sound of the stalks swishing and crackling as he walked away pushing them aside. She lay there in her rumpled play dress, sobbing in fear until his steps faded away and only silence was heard. It ends there. That’s all she ever would remember of that summer’s day while playing hide-and-seek with her cousins on Grandpa’s farm, and life as any little girl should be allowed to have, well, for Evelyne, it disappeared when she was five. I am Evelyne.

Copyright Sandra Hart 2018©️

All Rights Reserved

( Excerpt from work in progress Blue Daffodils by Sandra Hart )

 DANCING AT THE LOTUS

  

She heard the sounds of the piano stridently rising above the restaurant chatter and began to squirm in her seat. Whenever the music started it was hard to sit still. She looked at her parents busy with their menus, then over to her brother who was attempting to make a paper airplane from a cocktail napkin and slowly slid off her seat and ran toward the dance floor. 

 She loved music and the sound always made her want to move and swirl and swing around the floor with her arms open wide. She couldn’t help it. Something inside of her four-year old self just made her do it because it was fun and made her happier than hugging the cat or eating ice cream. Swinging and dancing and moving to the music until she was dizzy was out of her control. It was just what she loved to do on Sunday afternoons at The Lotus.

It was 1943 in Washington, D.C.. The Lotus restaurant was popular among military and government personnel during the war years. The Washington Daily News called it “a sort of a poor man’s Stork Club where the average Joe can put on a dog without pulling more than a five spot out of his billfold.” 

The restaurant occupied the top level of a two-story 1926 building and her little dancing legs looked forward to those stairs each week when her family lunched at The Lotus. It was not the food for which she had visions in her head, it was the music. Most of all it was the music that made her love those stairs.

In movies of the 1930s and 1940s, supper clubs were portrayed as places where big stars and popular bands such as Glenn Miller’s played, but far more common were the sort that hosted local musicians. Still, patrons dressed up and enjoyed a time out, dining and dancing, and maybe a floor show, without spending a fortune.

 Located in the capital, The Lotus got the best bands of the era and she got to dance out on that shiny floor with them all. Twirling in and out between the soldiers and their girls taking that last dance of leave, or when she was held in her daddy’s arms, the thrill was always there. Music was in her heart and she just had to move and be a part of the magic she felt.

This particular Sunday she had the dance floor for a few minutes all by herself and she swirled and dipped to the live music with her curls flying in the air and was just having the best of time before her father interrupted her short solo by leading her back to the table. It was also on this particular Sunday that her life could’ve gone in another direction. A talent scout from Hollywood just happened to be lunching at the Lotus that afternoon and thought that this little dancing girl should go to Hollywood for a screen test. After all Shirley Temple was a big star and he thought he saw something with the same star quality in this little curly haired girl who loved to dance. 

Her parents said politely to the Hollywood gentleman, “Thank you very much, but no.” They didn’t want their daughter to be in the movies. That was the end of that, as far as her parents were concerned, but certainly not the end of her love for music, or dancing, or just being herself. 

The author Virginia Woolf once said, “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.” 

 And so, my friends, that was my life during the war when I was four. And in the end, it turned out, I did it anyway. All by myself. My way. Written large.

Copyright Sandra Hart 2015. All rights reserved. 

  

Curiosity and Life in General

NASA mission to Mars: Rover Curiosity touches down

Congratulations to NASA. A new mission begins that will give us knowledge about what is going on way up there in Mars. It really is hard to believe that so much has happened my my lifetime.

Where is my safe little world of yesterday? I have been around long enough to see the world become smaller and smaller and life become more and more complicated. Men on the moon.  Senseless mass murders in public places of safety. Impossible packaging on all things bought because some unhinged or evil person decided to taint Tylenol. Cell phones, the internet, advances in medicine.

Everything seems to be changing too quickly for me. Each time I get a new Mac or iPhone, Apple soon comes out with a better and newer version making mine obsolete. Xboxes, Wii’s for everything! STOP. Let me breathe just a little. I am not ready to get off, please just slow down!  I don’t want to live in a world all about “things.”

The greatest “thing” that made my day when I started kindergarten in Wintersville, Ohio was the mega-box of Crayolas that my mother bought for me to bring with me on my very first day of school. I was the luckiest person in the whole wide world. Reds, greens, blues, so many colors I could use to make rainbows and houses and skies and pictures of my dog. I coveted those crayons like nobodies business and couldn’t wait to show them off to my soon-to-be new friends.

Until, that is, the world of other little people’s stuff entered into my life. My soon-to-be new friend Donna had a baton. Shiny silver-colored with a nice white ball on the end. Uummmm….. I soon found the ability to covet more than one thing at the same time.

By the end of the week, although I still loved my new crayons and my friend was happy with her baton, I keep eying Donna’s baton and she kept wanting to use my crayons. Here is where the World of Barter was born in my un-evolved little brain. Donna and I decided to switch (just for the weekend) our coveted treasures. She took home my Crayolas and I got her baton.

How much fun I had with that baton all weekend and I lovingly took care of that baton, so when Monday morning came and we had to give back our bartered items, mine came back to me (you’re right) mostly broken(just as much as my heart was when I looked at my well-used coveted gift from my mother).

That was my first painful lesson in trusting that others will treat your “things” as you do.

So good luck on Mars. Let us begin to love and tolerate our differences more. Let us be grateful for what we have and not covet more than we need. Let’s slow down and smell the roses.

©Sandra Hart 2012