Front Porches, Sycamore Trees, and Rosary Beads
Lakewood is wonderfully old and full of ghosts. So when I moved back after decades away, it was an easy decision to write a nostalgic piece about being young there, long ago. But it was hard to choose from so many ghosts and harder still to know what to do when an unexpected one appeared. Most difficult of all was figuring out the meaning of these memories - and what they might bring.
In 1959, houses were made of brick or clapbard, built tall and strong, and graced with wide porches. Never fancy, always welcoming, front porches were decorated with frayed rattan rugs and mismatched chairs, generous with offerings of cherry popsicles and little green-bottled Cokes. Open to sunshine and breezes, sturdy railings made perfect perches to see and be seen, to soak up summer's sweetness, while waiting for friends.
There, late in the morning, girls read about the adventures of Nancy Drew and turned up the volme on pink plastic radios, Teenager in Love tugging at their hearts. Boys, littering the stops, chewed gum, smacked baseballs into worn mitts, and acted cool. There, on hot afternoons, with skies gone black and the smell of rain rising, kids of all ages waited to confront the coming wildness. And when the storm finally roared across Lake Erie, everyone yelled and whooped and held their ground - fearless in the face of howling winds and savage thunder. There, after supper, Dads with ties askew and white shirts wrinkled, read the paper and listened to the Indians. Moms, aprons finally discarded, rested. And there, as night came and crickets sang, families waited for the stars to shine and the moon to rise.
Tall sycamore trees spread their massive branches, arching green canopies over narrow, red-brick streets. Ghostly white in winter and splashed with grey-green bark in spring, they were like friends giving gifts. Their fallen, skittering leaves whispered like spirits on Halloween, and their bare branches draped themselves in snow and ice for Christmas Eve. Best of all, on summer nights, at least for the lucky and the bold, they made a path of shadows, a mysterious place for a girl and boy to stop, stand close and kiss.
Which brings up - nuns. Back then, Catholic school nuns were vehemently opposed to kissing, and they often warned against temptations that might precipitate it, things like holding hands and the wearing of a lipstick called Tangee. If memory serves, they also abhorred crooked margins and didn't care much for girls who giggled or boys who burped. The oldest nuns, the ones who were always assigned to teach eighth grade, were heavily armed with rulers and scowls. Shielded from head to toe in long veils, heavy habits, and sensible shoes, they were as powerful as their 100-pound rosary beads. They were invincible, and they were powerful and they - and the toughest boy in class - knew it.
Nuns could be thoughtless, in a mindless rap-on-the-knuckles sort of way. For reasons unknown, they could also be unkind. It was clear that the lonely kids fared no better with the nuns than they did with the kids who had friends. The lucky kids acted as if the unlucky ones were invisible, and so did the nuns - no matter how often or how quickly the odd kids raised their hands to answer, no matter how how smart they might be, they were rarely, if ever, acknowledged.
The boy who wore a tattered Davy Crockett hat and ate his pencil pouch never had a chance.
In the end, however, nearly everyone - girls with ponytails or beehives, boys with crew cuts or ducktails - survived the perils of eighth grade. Mere minutes after reciting the final graduation prayer and leaving St. Clement Church, many forgot the nuns' teachings at the first mixed party they could find. A few months later, all moved on to high school. A minority attended public school, the majoriy toughed it out for another four years at vaious parochial institutions.
After that, we went on to college or jobs, and life.
Some had their destinies shattered by accidents, sickness or the Vietnam War. Many found safe futures in surrounding suburbs or in far away places. Others never left Lakewood at all. A few, after many years away, came back.
Like me.
True, I didn't go far, just a few miles west with my new husband, where newer houses beckoned. And of course I visited Lakewood often, but for many years the seasons of my life and the beat of my heart were somplace else entirely - in a one-story house with a picket fence in front and a sunporch in back, where crabapple trees bloomed pink in the spring, on a wide street that seemed enchanted on winter nights when it snowed.
The point is, I was gone for a very long time and the journey back was full of unknowns. So now, with my daughter grown and me on my own, I am back where I started from, wondering what changes, what stays, and what it might mean.
Frrom my new perch, I get a novel view of my old town. From my front balcony view, Lake Erie stretches out calm and green blue, and downtown Cleveland shines. The other view from the west balcony is closer to long ago memories - leading to familiar houses and trees, sun and shadow. I wonder, if I walk that way, what will I find?
During the day, even in summer, front porches are empty and streets quiet. I wonder what happened to my vision of sycamore trees - there seem to be so few, with smaller canopies and diminished shade. I also discover that my old grade school, St. Clement, has closed its doors forever. And yet, my brick house on Belle Avenue, along with the clapboard houses next door and across the street, still stand, solid as time, as do the memories of friends who once lived there. On summer nights, the remaining sycamores, joined by stalwart oaks, cast shadows, streetlights shining through branches and leaves. Crickets still sing and the moon still rises. Sometimes, laughter and music drift out from porches, or I see someone sitting on steps, wiaiting.
Once, I even saw a girl and a boy standing under a shadowed tree, kissing.
Which brings me back to - nuns. Today, of course, I think about them quite differently. I see them in small, forlorn rooms, all alone. I imagine them facing endless Fridays of fishsticks, perpetually cleaning the church on Saturday, kneeling too long on Sunday. I begin to understand how they tried to teach us, certainly not with enlightenment, but perhaps in the only way they knew, framed in the reference of the Catholic '50s and their lowly place in it. And so, afer all these years, I do wish them well, hoping they are now living in luxury in some of the finest mansions in heaven.
Even more, I wish I had been nice to the lonely boy in the tattered Davy Crockett hat.
Today, if I could, I would thank my unexpected ghost for stopping by and invite him kindly to be part of the things that stay: late afternoon light shining through tall windows, echoes of young voices whispering, dreams floating like chalk dust in air. These small things, I would tell him, along with towering trees and wide-open porches, will remain forever. As lasting as love, as stong as rosary beads, they are memories to hold onto and memories to be thankful for - wonderfully old and mysteriously permanent ghosts who bring surprising joy to bittersweet journeys home.
By Therese Marotta