The Dreams I've had Through My Eyebrows

I'm a big believer in dreams...in my dreams, anyway. I love these mini-movies that play out in my head almost every night-so vibrantly colored, so high-action and no cohesive plot line at all. Of course the fun wouldn't be complete if I didn't find a victim to whom I can relate the whole crazy story in full the moment I wake up. My dad can attest to this habit of mine; I believe he kept a special pair of earplugs for the mornings when I said, "Hey, Dad, you won't believe this dream I had last night!"

Sometimes I can't believe the dreams I've had: ones where I've felt terrible pain ( a dog was gnawing my hand off), dreams in which I've experience great heartache (Matthew was in love with a raven-haired woman), and nightmares that played out in horrible detail and left me sobbing at their denouement.

The one most infamous with my family is likely the simplest I've ever had. It involved eyebrows. Abraham Lincoln's eyebrows, to be precise, because more venerable bushy eyebrows cannot be imagined, my friend.

Here's the scoop. I was the fly on the wall while my dad was standing talking to a group of his friends, and he said, "You know what the great thing about Abraham Lincoln was? He thought through his eyebrows."

End of dream. Now, I do believe in the hidden meaning, but here it's rather tricky, and I think this dream pointed to just one thing: my love of the human brow. Eyebrows are really quite underrated in beauty estimation, and the only bad brow in my book is the boring one.

But to dreams: a recent vivid dream I had involved me driving a school bus up two flights of stairs into a long rectangular classroom. I ran around imploring people to help me drive the bus back down the stairs, feeling certain that I couldn't do it, especially turning it at the landing. Some woman leapt into the bus and accelerated down the stairs, beautifully navigating the tight angle at the landing.

This dream is interpreted by me thus: I have a little baby (the bus), and I cannot make this baby sleep (driving the bus down a very narrow flight of stairs) sometimes. Simple. But if they were all that simple, I wouldn't look forward to their vivid theater, but I do, and I'll tell you more about the dreams I've had another time.

A Wandering Nomad with Hairy Knees

I'm a nocturnal nomad beginning every night at 2:30am. I roam my 1200 sq. feet of desert habitation looking for the Promise Land where my blue-eyed baby will actually go back to sleep and stay asleep. I finally decide to accept my sleepless fate at around 5am. Then I transform into a bear and roar and growl my way through the morning.

And I have hairy knees.

I made this discovery again yesterday when I looked down at my legs, and said, "Oh shoot!" It's a chronic problem, you see.

My sister Vinca pointed it out once a couple years ago on a visit to see me (last time she came she made me aware of my unruly eyebrows-that's the love only a big sister can dish out). We were driving somewhere, and she just happened to glance over at my legs.

"Hillary, you didn't shave. That's some hair on your knees."

"I shaved," I said rather sullenly. "I guess I just didn't get my knees very good."

The hair sticking up was a good couple centimeters long. I thought about putting band-aids over my knee caps to hide the hideous sight, but alas! none left in the first aid kit.

When I shave, if I don't really pay attention, my knees will laugh and high five each other when I get out of the shower. I have to really concentrate on pulling the razor very slowly and accurately over every little knob. I think they're just abnormally curvaceous knees, and it's not a good thing. I never hear men say, "I love my wife's hairy, curvaceous knees!" And that's a real shame.

Strangely, my husband has never mentioned it, so A. he either secretly thinks they're sexy or B. he figures if I haven't learned how to properly shave at this point, it's pretty much hopeless.

Which reminds me of the big toe problem. You know what I'm talking about-oh, yes you do, don't you? (If you're a man, you should, because you guys have tarantula toes, and that's no joke.) Some years ago I heard a couple of my aunts (names protected) discussing waxing and shaving their big toes. This was news to me! Could it be that this was one more thing we women must do to keep ourselves from looking like the ape-creatures men have so proudly embraced being? I checked the situation out first opportunity, and wouldn't you know? They were right! Another item on the beauty-maintenance list.

And I've got to do it, because my man will tease me if I don't. I mean, really, my husband will rub his foot against my leg at night to check if I've shaved! And then he makes a tut-tut noise, and I give him a good shove while he shakes with laughter under the covers. I have no idea how on earth he can tell with all that scruffy fur he's carrying around. But I get back at him by teasing him about his 10 long, very long, chest hairs. He figures he's adding one a year, and I've told him someday they'll be my old age pillow. Yes, the day will come when my nocturnal nomadic days will be a distant memory, and I'll cozy up to him with my hairy knees, fluffing his chest hairs just so, and have myself a good long sleep.

Part 2: And Mom Beheads One in the Garden

My dad's experience explains the enormity of my mother's reaction to her own confrontation with a slithering reptile. The image of Dad stepping over the log and saying, "Honey, I think I just got bit," and his subsequent misery were no doubt still fresh as Mom knelt in our family garden later that summer, tending the bean plants and unaware that she had company.

I feel some guilt in the telling of this episode, for I remember our dad adjuring my siblings and I to help her before he left to work a neighbor's farm.

We kids were being particularly unproductive, listening to music and rocking on the couch or the floor in a general state of ennui when Mom burst open our front door and said, "Oh, s--t! There's a copperhead in the garden!"

All four of us froze in horror, not because of the presence of a snake in the garden, but because of the word which had escaped our virtuous mother's lips. It was Vinca who finally stuttered, "Wha-waa-what did you say?"

Mom omitted the word and cut straight to the point before adding in wide-eyed frenzy, "I need something...anything! I've got to kill it!"

It was very unfortunate that Mom spotted the rifle on the living room shelf. She ran out of the house with it and the ammunition before we could prevent her. Nate was close on her heels, however, urging her to let him shoot it (he was a good shot and had actually handled it before).

"Stand back, all of you!" she ordered.

After promptly doing so, we kids watched as our mother blasted not only the bean plants, but the corn and tomatoes as well. Upon inspection, the snake was found to be unscathed. Having depleted the sparse ammunition, Mom demanded rocks to throw at it.

My sister Annie dragged an enormous rock from the flower bed wall, laughing and winking at me and Nate as she lugged it between her legs. Our mother, still powered by adrenaline, lifted the considerable weight over her head and hurled it like She-Woman in the general direction of the bean plants.

But the snake, not surprisingly, survived the bombardment of stones, though it had lost much of its cover. Our flattened garden was a sad testimony to the presence of the iniquitous reptile that had, despite the assault, hardly moved from its original position. Mom decided the time had come for close combat. She marched to the side of the house, grabbed the hoe propped there and returned to the very place where she had first discovered the copperhead while kneeling in its proximity. She then did what she should have done at the first by quickly and precisely chopping off its head.

By the time Dad returned home that evening, our mother was her usual calm and ladylike self, and we kids were impatient to relate the story of our adventure. We met him at the car, and Mom stood behind us with folded arms as we all spoke at once. Somewhere in the telling, one of us burst out with, "And Mama said a bad word. She said the s-word!"

"I did not," Mom spoke firmly.

"But, Mom, you did," said Nate. "When you came in the house."

"I would never say that word." Her voice was very quiet, and her large eyes were narrowed. We didn't dare argue with her.

At least not until she went back into the house. Then we all turned to Dad and began whispering, "She said it, Daddy. She really did."

Dad was skinning the miscreant snake in the driveway. He looked up, and his pale green eyes were bright with amusement when he said, "I believe you. But it's our secret, okay? Don't make your Mama angry."

It's strange that our mother's use of a bad word should capture our imaginations more than the image of her firing a rifle into the bean plants. I can only say it is a testament to her beautiful manners, and I need not add, I have never heard her say it since.

Part 1: Dad Stepped On a Venomous Snake

I am contemplating Autumn and all its offerings. It won't show its lovely face here for another two months, I know. Even then it will not sweep its palette of warm colors across this desert landscape, but it will bring the cooler eighties temps with it. And I feel ready to rejoice just thinking of that.

Before I turn my back on this season, however, I will embrace it by indulging in summer memories from the past. Those that are foremost in my mind at the moment involve, of all things, snakes.

My brother Nate and I used to sneak up on the garden variety to touch their slippery skins until they ejected their forked tongues at us. Our brave lab Rueben attacked even the venomous kind, rattlesnakes and copperheads, with vigor in the cornfield and woods-barking, circling and lunging. Twice he was bitten, and he would forever have the bare patches of fur as proof of battle.

The scariest encounter happened early one summer. We kids were swimming in the creek in the afternoon. There was a massive old tree which bent its limbs over the water. From one sturdy limb Dad had hung an old barge rope. When we weren't taking turns using it to launch ourselves into the water, we were having dog paddle races in the gentle current or adding rocks to the dam we'd built to deepen our swimming hole.

My parents came home early that day. We saw the car cross the culvert, barreling toward home. This was the first unusual incident, for Mom and Dad often stopped the car at the creek, especially if we kids were there, and they'd lie down in the shallows to cool off after a hot sweaty day in the woods.

We kids abandoned the cool water, jumping the spring as we followed the creek path before climbing to the road and dripping a trail down the dirt lane. As we rounded the corner by the mailbox, we were surprised to see our parents still by the car. And Dad was in the passenger seat. This was a new alarm; Mom never drove. That and the fact that Dad's face was a shade we'd never seen before as he leaned his head against the open car door told us something was very wrong. We all four ran to his side, our words and our limbs becoming tangled. He responded to this onslaught by asking us weakly to back up and give him space.

It was Mom who said in a strained voice, "Your dad was bitten by a copperhead."

The inevitable questions erupted from us in panic. "Is Dad going to die? Why isn't Dad at the hospital?"

Mom's big brown eyes were alarming in size, the rest of her face pinched by stress. Dad finally cut through the tears and mounting fear by saying in a firm if weakened voice, "I'm not going to die. Help me inside the house."

Once inside Dad cut the boot off his foot. There was nothing else to do; the foot was swollen to twice its size. We kids watched in anxious fascination as Dad laboriously pushed the sock down, his face tight with pain. When he finally collapsed against the couch, sweating from the effort, the foot was revealed to us: mottled with various shades of red and blue that had spread up his leg.

It was my brother Nate who spotted the fang marks. "Look!" he cried, pointing to the top of the foot. "I found where it got you, Dad!"

We all bent over the two tiny white marks.

"That's it, alright," said Dad. "Now someone turn down that air conditioner. I'm burning up."

That night I woke up to the sound of someone being sick in the bathroom. We kids straggled out to the living room where we found Dad sweating and miserable by the air conditioner. Mom was urging him to drink a tall glass of water, her cure for everything.

"Kids, go back to bed. There's nothing you can do," said Dad in a low voice.

But we didn't, because we didn't fully trust Dad's assurances that he wasn't going to die. He was shaking and sweating badly; we had to keep watch and pray if nothing else.

For two days my dad suffered from recurring fever and vomiting induced by the venom. On the third morning he got ready for work. It took quite a lot of duck tape to secure his work boot to his swollen foot, and every day he had to rewrap the shoe, but he recovered as he said he would.

And we learned the story by and by. As I have said my parents worked in the woods for a living. While they hunted for valuable roots to dig, Dad always walked ahead of our mother. This time he stepped over a large decaying log, breaking his own rule about looking before proceeding. The prick on his foot was virtually instantaneous. Luckily, Dad recognized the copperhead pattern on the snake's back as it slithered away, but the burning heat that surged through his foot quickly spread up his leg even as he stood in a nearby creek to gain relief.

Dad knew copperheads are rarely fatal, so he resisted Mom's urgent demands that they go straight to a hospital. But we prayed, too, and prayer is powerful.

I'm Not Weird...

My husband is a great guy-handsome, smart, normal. Makes me wonder how I got him, really, because my romantic beginnings weren't too auspicious. Even my pretend romances didn't go well; I never was chosen as the wife when I played "house" with other kids.

Let me 'splain. No, is too long. Let me sum up:

For a brief space there in Tennessee, my aunt's family lived near us-only about an hour away. They lived in a house I just loved. It was yellow, my favorite color, and had a loft or something of the sort. The yard was beautiful. And there was a big room in that house where the cousins all played when our families got together. It was full of the usual accouterments of childhood, but what we played at most often was "house".

There were three girls and two boys playing at house which meant there were two "couples", and one of the girls had to play the part of the baby, kid-whatever. You might guess...yep, 99% of the time I was the baby, and the other 1% of the time Annie, my sister, was trying to convince Nate or my cousin J to chose me for their pretend wife as I stood with arms crossed (eyes too, possibly) and stamped my foot in the corner, refusing to have anything more to do with baby bottles or fake naptime. Eventually, they stopped giving me the old fishy eye and did as she asked, but I can tell you, I wasn't treated well at all! I was like the poor pock-marked first wife from The Good Earth.

Fortunately, it didn't cripple my self-esteem too badly, and I was able to grow up into the strange little girl I was always meant to be.

Unlike my sisters, I was romantically handicapped. The first boyfriend I had was in fifth grade, and he only stayed with me because I was the best friend of the girl he really liked. That was actually a repeating cycle, too, because he really adored Michelli. If they broke up, I was the occasional sub for her until they'd get together again.

In sixth grade I got set up with a boy at the lunch table (could have been Michelli's doing), and he offered to walk me to my bus after school. Well, we started out with our little entourage of curious friends, and when we got to my bus I just kept on walking and talking until we reached his bus. Then I said good-bye and shook his hand. He was so mortified by this role reversal that he refused to talk to me the next day.

There was another boy I had a long-standing crush on, so I declared my admiration for him while he was standing in line with his classmates before recess. I sang to him in front of everyone-several verses, couple choruses-while he withdrew like a turtle into its shell, pretending I wasn't there. He, too, would never talk to me again.

But, as you can see, I used their tolerance for embarrassment as an indicator of whether or not they should be with me, and that was really quite smart.

Because I was definitely one of those kids. Do I mean the one who got up in front of her fourth-grade class when the teacher was absent and did some crazy 1960s-inspired dance for several minutes? Check. The little girl telling jokes to her sixth-grade class? Check. The one donning the witch's hat at the classroom Halloween party and singing "The Witch is Dead" from Wizard of Oz while kicking my legs in can-can fashion? Check! I think it was my best friend Michelli who summed it up best when she gave me a key chain for my twelfth birthday that said, "I'm Not Weird, I'm Gifted!"

And I'm sure that handsome guy I married would agree (It's in our marriage contract: I do hereby vow never to refer to my lovely wife as weird, but always to assert her worth as a gifted individual.).

Maybe as a kid he wouldn't have thought much of the girl in the mismatched, brightly-colored outfit and psychedelic canvas shoes. If I had sung at him, I would have landed in the nearest mud puddle without a doubt. But as adults we're meant to be together for sure! Though, I did recently embarrass him at the public library, but that's another story completely.

Little Leprechauns

My brother used to say I had a little leprechaun in my head indiscriminately pushing buttons. Well, now I have four of them sprung to life around me, and I'm a just a pawn in whatever crazy game they're playing.

I have no control over simple, but important, details of life: how much sleep I get, when I can go to the restroom, and how sticky my house is.

My baby is my Leprechaun-in-Charge. He's getting over a cold right now, so every cough and snuffle he made last night sprang me from my bed with arms and legs flaying like Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Once I realized in my half-asleep state that he wasn't awake, I wheeled round toward my bed to collapse, my head bobbling on my shoulders...ah, if I only had a brain!

Adjutant-Leprechaun (my preschooler) placed an open juice in her sister's lunch container. It dribbled out onto our new couch. My son realized his sister had done something hugely naughty and proceeded to bring the evidence to me in the bathroom.

"Mama, look what Ella did," he said, holding it up as it leaked lemonade faster than a BP pipeline.

I followed the trail of stickiness he'd brought through my bedroom and down the carpeted hall to the puddle on the laminate flooring in front of the couch. I wanted to scream, because I've seen enough juice and milk spills to send me to the local asylum for a good two months at least rehab, and I'm threatening to make everyone drink from sippy cups until they're twenty.

I put baking soda on the couch. It's our solution for any liquid mess in our home, because it sucks any fluid right up and clumps very nicely into easy to dispose of lumps. Arm & Hammer owes half their business to me and my husband, because if there's a potty accident on the carpet, my husband and I could knock each other out cold racing for the baking soda. "Quick, get the baking soda!" I'll yell if there's a spill on the living room rug. Wine on the chair? "The baking soda! The baking soda!" If I was bleeding from some terrible accident onto the new sofa, I would lift my head in operatic fashion, waving my arm limply at the mess, and urge my husband to, "apply...the...bak...ing...soda!"

So you understand why I began dumping it over every little drop of lemonade on the carpet before my resolve gave out halfway down the hall. Too many drops and, besides, our vacuum cleaner can't take much more baking soda before it wheezes out its last breath in white, dusty protest. Anyway, there was already a pound or two on the floor where our preschooler had had a potty accident.

Blackberry Cobbler

Where I grew up in Tennessee, wild blackberries grew in abundance. They were plumpest and juiciest in late July and August, fully ripened with the heat and the humidity. My parents, siblings and I would hike down the long lane from our little house and climb a gate into Mr. Spann's field. There in a hollow shaded by trees, the blackberry bushes formed a beautiful tangle of leaves, berries and thorns. For our equipment we had milk jugs with the tops cut off and our own two hands.


My sister Vinca was an expert at not getting pricked with the thorns. Annie and I kept up a chorus of "ouch!" the whole time. My berry-picking form was not the best in other ways, too, for I would obsessively pluck practically all the berries from a bush, no matter their size or degree of ripeness. When Dad glanced my way, he'd say, "Whoa, Hoo-doo! Leave some for the birds."


He should have added, "And some for the pail!" because many berries got eaten before they landed in our humble milk-jug pails, our fingers and mouth stained purple with the evidence. Those that made it home were destined for mom's blackberry cobbler.


To this day I have yet to find anything that could compare with my mom's blackberry cobbler. It was the culinary equivalent of heaven, but the preparation, at least to us kids, was brutal. We had to take turns stirring the blackberry, sugar and cornstarch mixture over the hot stove until it had practically formed a jam. Mom would come in to inspect every few minutes, and we'd lift the spoon wearily from the bubbling mixture for her to see, and then she'd shake her head tersely.


When she finally decided it was ready, the mixture was poured into the cobbler pan (a pan with a slightly rounded bottom that was so large we kids used it to go sledding on the rare occasion we got snow). After what seemed like an eternity, it emerged from the oven, steaming from beneath its thick golden layer of homemade pastry. We always ate the first slice warm-very warm, cooled only enough to prevent the burning of our mouths with its delicious purple filling. The taste and smell of it is something I can still conjure up in my mind and something, too, which will always embody the bountiful summers of my childhood.

I won't have that cobbler again, I imagine, but it is still my favorite dish in the world. I don't have my mom's talent with pastry dough and, sadly, I never attempted to learn it growing up. And the last time I had wild blackberries was the final summer I spent with my parents in Tennessee. My siblings had all journeyed away from our home, and it was just my dad and me braving the humidity and thorns to pluck memories from the blackberry bush.

But here's my wish for you, my friends, wherever you may be: I hope you are lucky enough to find or make for yourself your own perfect piece of berry cobbler.

The Paddle and the Bathroom

This morning I dropped a bombshell on my kids by confessing that I skipped kindergarten and went straight to first grade. Then, here's the kicker: I had to repeat first grade! I never lose an opportunity to teach the children about overcoming one's past, you see. They looked a little flabbergasted, however, and sorry for me, too. But at least they didn't say, "Ah, Mom, you must have been really dumb!"

"Why?" my son simply asked.

"Because my teacher spanked us." I said bluntly.

I explained. At many schools in the South, teachers would often spank for misbehavior. My husband claims this did not happen at his schools in Albuquerque. They must have been more progressive, because Solomon's adage "spare the rod, spoil the child" was something my elementary school operated by, and most of the teachers had a wide wooden paddle hanging by the classroom door inscribed with the names of those who had received its instruction.

My first first grade teacher's name was Mrs. Crow (Berto and Ana agreed with me that this name was quite appropriate). I don't remember much about her. I think she was rather skinny with thin, ratty blonde hair. What I do remember are all the times she threatened to paddle us if we didn't perform well on our work. Once, the day before we were to take a spelling test, she stood in front of the class and told us very succintly that whoever did not get 100% when the substitute gave the test the next day would have to line up in the hall to receive a spanking when she returned.

I was pretty well scared because I had missed two words, and sure enough, she made us line up. I remember my dread as I moved slowly up the hall for my paddling, the kids ahead of me sniffling as they reentered the classroom. I didn't describe my feelings to my children, but I gave them the gist of the circumstances.

"Wow, she was like...like a villain!" said Berto in righteous indignation. "What happened?"

"Paca and Grandmama pulled me out of school," I said. "I stayed home the rest of the year. Then they had a meeting with other parents and the school board, and she got fired."

"Well, I'm not sorry she lost her job," said Berto.

"Yep, she deserved it," I agreed, but I refrained from telling him and Ana about my most harrowing experience in my early school years, which strangely occurred during my second shot at first grade.

My second first grade teacher was a Mrs. Weatherspoon, a mild mannered lady with glasses and curly brown hair. I really enjoyed her class; the second time around was a new beginning for me. But something must go wrong, and it always does-at least for me.

As a small child I was terrified of being locked in small enclosed spaces. So terrified, in fact, that I refused to shut the door to our tiny bathroom at home. Because I would leave the door ajar, my family members often walked in on me. I didn't mind as much as they did, but I'd scream at whoever it was when they left, "Don't shut the door!"

There was a family legend that my fear of being shut in a small space and possibly gasping out my last breath in a closet or bathroom was my sister Annie's fault. I don't know how, unless she dabbled in hypnosis as a child, and I, as the expendable fourth child, was one of her experiments. It's possible, I suppose.

I do know, though, that when I started school I no longer had the option to leave the restroom door ajar. And the bathroom I had to use was like a replica from my worst nightmare.

It lay in a short passageway between Mrs. Weatherspoon's class and that of another first grade classroom. This hall was dark and narrow, and the bathroom was a one person occupancy. I avoided it at all costs, because if I held out for lunch I could always use the hall bathroom with its swinging door.

But one day early on in the year, I could not wait, and I had no choice but to venture to that no man's land. I raised my hand urgently, and my teacher nodded at me graciously-I could go.

I went down that hall like I was going to my doom. I turned on the light and shut the door, then quickly opened it again. After I had closed it a second time, I debated: should I lock it or not? No, no way! That was just one more barrier between me and the outside world. If I was quick, no one would catch me using the potty, and I could bolt out of there.

I sat down with a leg extended toward the door, ready to jam it back in the face of some unsuspecting fellow first-grader if they attempted to enter. When I finished I flushed and did a quick wash with heart pounding (only a moment more til freedom!), and then I turned the knob to make my exit and pulled.

The door wouldn't open!

I was going to die in there for sure-a lonely, forgotten little first grader in a stupid, one toilet restroom! I began crying hysterically, yanking with all my might on the door knob and throwing in an occasional kick against my unyeilding captor, the door. Still, just in case no one heard me-"Help!" I screamed. "Help, help, HELLLPPP!"

The door opened so suddenly I was stunned into silence. Mrs. Weatherspoon stood there with as many of her students as could cram into the narrow hall. My classmates were snickering into their hands, and my teacher was trying not to look annoyed.

"Sweetheart, the door jams sometimes," she said calmly. "You just have to turn the knob and pull harder."

That's what you think, Lady! I thought. I wiped the back of my hands across my face and proceeded to my desk, my classmates gawking at me all the way.

But what was a little humiliation compared to a long, possibly fatal, imprisonment in the first grade bathroom? I was a survivor!

And being the survivor that I am, I am grateful my kids have had no such similiar traumatic experiences in school, though this morning when they got out of the car, I did find I'd neglected one small detail in our morning rush.

"Have a good day, Miss Ana," I said, turning to smile at my big first-grader as she hopped out. Then I groaned. "Oh, Ana, we didn't comb your hair!"

It looked like the wet stuffing from a scarecrow, all streams and strands. People weren't likely to buy that it was intentional, since she's not a thirteen-year-old boy with underwear showing above his pants and a skateboard under the arm. But, oh well, one day of mussed hair wasn't likely to traumatize her. As for me, I'll never forget my first grade year-either one of them.

CATCH IS A CONTACT SPORT

One spring my dad spray-painted a baseball diamond on the grass near the walnut trees in our yard. Our family played a game almost every day. Usually Dad pitched, and we kids would see how many bases we could run before Dad's dog Rueben caught the ball in his mouth and ran it back to the pitcher. (I can tell you, that Labrador was some great outfielder!)

When I, the baby, came up to bat, Mom helped me swing. Sometimes Nate pitched, and Dad helped me bat. One time, however, I begged and pleaded to stand at the plate by myself. After all, don't we all come to the age where we just want to stand on our own two feet, staring down a pitcher and his canine outfielder?

It was a big moment for his baby girl, and Dad did his best to prepare me. "Okay, Hoo-doo," he said. "I'm going to throw it real slow, okay? Just keep your eye on the ball, sweetheart. Remember, eye on the ball."

I nodded matter-of-factly and spit in the dirt. Then I planted my feet and waited for my moment of destiny.

It hit me-Smack!-square on my left cheek.

An unearthly wail arose almost instantaneously. It took me a moment to realize it was coming from my own lungs. By that time Dad was leaning over me with an anguished look on his face, the kind you have after you've maimed your youngest child.

Everyone gathered around me, and a fuss was made over me such as I had not enjoyed in a long time. Sure, I was in pain, and a large bruise was blooming on my cheek just below my eye, but I was not indifferent to the prospect of all the extra attention I might be getting for the next several minutes and possibly hours. As I was carried into the house, I sniffingly asked for ice cream. A few minutes later Mom was hand feeding it to me. I don't know how on earth I convinced them that because my cheek was sore, my hands no longer worked. That's the kind of brazen lie parents only fall for when they're feeling guilty about smacking you in the face with a baseball.

No one realized then that it would become a chronic problem.

You see, my eyesight was terrible. There were incidents supporting this truth before I got glasses. For instance, the fact that I kept crossing my eyes and running into walls. But I'm pretty sure Mom and Dad thought I was doing that to be cute, and, really, I wouldn't have put it past me.

My glasses didn't help me much when I got older, and one of my favorite games to play with Dad and Nate was catch. The first two or three times one of them threw me the ball, and it landed on my nose instead of in my mitt, they thought it was a fluke. By the fifth time it happened, they were out of patience and sympathy.

"Okay, that's it. No more, Hillary!" said Dad, desperate to put us all out of our misery. "I forbid you to play catch!"

Nate just stared at me in disbelief. The pitiful girl holding her nose in both hands and groaning was the closest thing he had to a little brother. All his dreams of playing catch with a sibling who could actually catch the ball more than twenty percent of the time had gone up in smoke.

I wasn't ready to throw in the glove, though. When Dad was busy or at work, I'd sneak up to Natie.

"Come on," I'd say in a low voice. "Come on, let's go-quick." Then I'd show him the mitts I had behind my back.

Nate humored me a few times, but my skills didn't really improve. I do remember learning how to duck and run to avoid getting hit in the face. It was basically dodge ball with a smaller, much harder ball.

All these years later I have yet to meet another person whose Dad forbade them to play catch because it was too dangerous. Still, be careful the next time you're tossing a ball around with the kids, because I'm pretty sure that's how I got my crooked nose.

Ice Cream "Sandwiches" and Dead Turtles by the Pond

My parents sometimes bought us four kids ice cream in the summer-nothing fancy, just the store brand Neapolitan that came in a plastic bucket. We could each have one bowl a day, and Vinca, a.k.a. Second Mommy, was given the task of dishing up fair portions between the four of us. I very clearly remember the time we three younger kids were sitting on the dining table watching Vinca dole out our treat. A moment later there was a pile of kids covered in Neapolitan ice cream between two halves of a broken table, and Vinca was standing with hands on hips glaring at us.

A quick discussion ensued. How mad would Mom and Dad be? The conclusion was: not very since our dining table at that time was a rectangular plastic foldout. We therefore set ourselves at ease and didn't worry about "staging" the wreckage to make it look like an act of God instead of the work of three growing children.

Boy, were we surprised when our parents walked in that evening! And a little resentful, too, because not only were they mad (very!), but they actually made us clean up the mess! Ah, parents-they can be so hard to figure out sometimes.

But now you're wondering: where the heck do the "sandwiches" come in, never mind the dead turtles? Well, I'll tell you then.

Annie thought we should make the presentation of our ice cream more interesting and also portable. So she invented our ice cream sandwich: two slices of white bread with ice cream slathered in the middle and then frozen to perfection. Nate and I thought it was brilliant; it rivaled her ''pizza" which was pretty hard to beat. That recipe also called for white bread, a generous smearing of ketchup and a little Velveeta before being baked in the oven for a couple minutes. (Ah, I'm so glad the flavor of it is only a distant memory now!) I don't remember Vinca partaking of these culinary delights. No doubt her taste buds were too mature for such exotic children's fare.

When the sandwiches were good and frozen, Annie, Nate and I quickly packed them up and beat it down the lane. We had an appointment with our favorite tree. Once we topped the big hill past the creek, we climbed the fence into Mr. Spann's cow field and headed for the lone tree at the rise beyond the old well.

This tree was huge, and it had wide sweeping branches that created a canopy where cows and humans could retreat from the sun. You had to bend to get beneath the outermost fingers of its evergreen boughs, but then there was plenty of space to sit up and even stand. Here we had our afternoon tea parties. (I don't know how we got Nate to agree to it; he must have been in it for the ice cream sandwiches.) We spread out my pink plastic tea set we'd brought with us and lay the sandwiches on its plates. Of course the ice cream had begun to melt by this point, but no matter; the bread absorbed it quite nicely.

If we didn't fall asleep after such a splendid meal, we were almost always ready to explore. Sometimes we chose the small band of trees on the bluff above the creek, sometimes the cluster of apple trees on the other side of the ravine where our family's favorite blackberry patch grew in tangled glory. But this one time we decided to make the long trek across that large field and cross the fence at the back of Mr. Spann's property. At that point we didn't know whose land we were on. It was for us uncharted territory.

It was on this expedition that we discovered the pond surrounded by a grove of trees. There were blackberry bushes there, too, growing a few feet from the pond. We thought the large murky pond was a great discovery until we noticed something peculiar. Dead turtles bobbed on the surface of the water and were decaying on the banks.

This was a mystery and one which seemed to have been waiting for us to discover it. Besides, we were outraged on behalf of the turtles. So we squatted by the pond and puzzled it over. We walked around the water and prodded the poor dead things with sticks, afraid to touch the surface with our hands. Nate was especially keen to figure out what had transpired at that lonely place, but after wasting an afternoon with no more evidence than the sight and smell of the carcasses, we were forced to turn back.

I now know turtles are sometimes exterminated in fishing ponds because they can interfere with fish populations. As a child I didn't know that, however. I just felt sad. We all did as we crossed the field and headed back down the lane toward home.

I Am NOT a Wicked Stepsister!

Once when my husband and I were newly engaged, we had plans for a big date on a friday night. But when he came to get me, I could tell by the look on his face he was too tired to go anywhere. So being dressed up with nowhere to go, I decided to amuse myself the best way I knew how. I asked him a provoking question inspired, as we women sometimes are, by a foolish magazine article I had read earlier in the day.

"Which feature of mine do you like the best?" I asked him, eager to hear the reply.

I give him points now for not groaning aloud.

"I don't know. What do you mean?" he responded wearily.

"Well, do you like my hair? My mouth? What?"

"I don't know," he repeated.

At this point, I became exasperated. "How about my eyes," I said, pointing him in the right direction. "My eyes are nice, right?"

His answer could only have come from a very, very weary man.

"You wear pretty eye make-up sometimes," he said.

"You have got to be kidding me!" I fumed. "You like my eye make-up?!"

"I like all of you," he answered hotly. "It's not any one thing. It's the whole package."

I was mad at him for the rest of the night. Matthew, however, never crawls for forgiveness over a simple honest statement. He just let me get over it.

And I did. Because he was right, of course. Some women have a special feature that really stands out-like beautiful vibrant green eyes or a plump mouth or a sweet dimple. I don't. The most I can say for my eyes is that they are intelligent eyes. My mouth is not like "the red, red rose", and I have a lopsided smile. And though few people will admit it to my face, I have a prominent nose, and it's crooked to boot. If you take each feature separately, they're nothing special, but together, in some mysterious way, they make up an attractive woman - the one my husband fell in love with.

I'm not overly sensitive about my imperfections, though I did tell everyone when I was a teenager that I would marry a man with big feet and rough hands. That was simply because I had already at that time destroyed my hands by working and cleaning with them, and my feet were a size 81/2 which I considered to be on the big side for a female foot. Unfortunately, I've come a long way since, my friends. After being pregnant with four children, my feet have stretched themselves to a size 10. That might be bigger than my husband's, but I don't know; he won't let me do a comparison.

He has no problem having a little fun at my expense, though. Like the time he pretended to get a running start just to get my foot into a sneaker - at the shoe store! Or the time when I was shopping for new socks after my third child, and I couldn't find socks for my shoe size. Until I did. That's when I discovered I was now wearing the extended sizes. That evening I laughingly asked my husband what I would have to do if my feet continued to grow - buy the extended, extended sizes?

"No," he said. "We'll just cut the toes off." Then he laughed himself silly.

"I am not a wicked stepsister!" I shouted after one of his little jokes.

"No, you're my big-footed Cinderella," he responded gallantly.

I can just picture how that fairytale might have played out if I had been in Cinderella's shoes. The King would have adjured the Duke to find "the big-footed gal who wears these size 10s!" And my stepsisters would have been petite little things with size 6 1/2 feet. When the Duke showed up they'd be trying to stuff the toe of my slipper with tissue when he wasn't looking just so they could claim my Prince. But no dice. I'd have my other glass slipper stashed in a duffle bag over my shoulder. Besides, my Prince Matthew would know his big-footed Cinderella anywhere.

Oh, and he doesn't have rough hands either. They're smooth as a baby's bottom. But don't get me wrong; there are times when I love those smooth hands. I don't, however, think he equally enjoys me rubbing my guitar callouses down his spine.