For several days now, my home has looked (and sounded) more like a war zone than a sanctuary. As I write these words, my living and dining room furniture has been “dispatched” to bedrooms, hallway and kitchen, and no matter how often I sweep, my adorable dust-mop of a dog is collecting tiny flecks of sawdust in his coat that he distributes wherever he goes.
The repairs to the hardwood floors in my old duplex are taking twice as long as promised (isn’t that always the way it goes?) and my patience is stretching only half as far as I’d hoped.
I may as well confess. I like order. I like things in their place, and looking lovely. I like working to the sound of music or the muted street noise outside my window – not (I’ve discovered) to the screeching of an electric saw and the dull pounding of a rubber mallet.
I’d almost forgotten phonics. It’s been a long time since I’ve sounded out words in pieces in order to read them. But last week I was reminded when a dear friend’s son read aloud to me from a beginner’s story book. I don’t recall the name of the book, or truthfully, even the contents of the story. Those things weren’t the point. The point was the first grader leaning over the book in my lap and word by word, stringing the sounds together so that one day, stories would make sense.
It was a beautiful struggle – and a fine beginning.
I’d almost forgotten that I learned “catch” by finding a hard “k” sound, following it with an “eh,” and then a “ch.” And that a word like “weighs” is a lot harder than “ways” to figure out.
My dog smiles. He really does. He has two smiles, actually. One is an open-mouthed, tongue-hanging-out grin that he reserves for company. He goes temporarily berserk when the doorbell rings, runs madly through the living room until guests have been “herded” in and seated, then parks himself in front of the one he deems most amenable to him and turns on the goofy charm.
I don’t know what he’s thinking (or if he’s thinking) – but his “company” smile seems to say “Wow! That was exhilarating! Now it’s time for you to tell me how much you appreciated my energetic performance, and how desperately cute I am!” (Most people oblige.)
My home has been invaded…twice. And while neither invasion was life threatening, both seemed quite disturbing and – to my mind at least – demanded immediate action.
The first intruder was a small, green lizard. He’d somehow made his way inside and had no doubt explored quite a bit of my home’s square footage before I saw him on my writing desk behind my pencil cup. While I was at my desk. Writing. Quite near said cup of pencils.
In many respects I consider myself a brave woman. I’ve faced CEO’s and a television camera or two; jumped from a perfectly good plane and spoken before plenty of people smarter than me. But none of that made my heart pound like my reptilian intruder. Since there was no one else to call, I stalked him myself – dreading the moment when I’d have to reach out my hand and pinch his tiny tail between my thumb and forefinger for a hasty eviction.
I saw him sitting on the curb with his skateboard wedged under his knees as I approached the stop sign, and almost immediately decided he must be waiting there for a bus. He looked about 16…brown skin, dreads, baggy sweat pants and a basketball jersey that probably hung below his knees when he stood. He would have looked less out of place in my part of town than the in the neighborhood I was driving through.
As I slowed to a stop I might have simply looked straight ahead, filing his image away in my mind under “kid alone at dusk, waiting for a bus,” except for one thing. He was reading a book. Reading intently, and shaping the words with his lips as though saying them out loud might make them easier to follow. And the book he was reading was a paperback copy of Elie Wiesel’s Night.