Kept
The little boy’s days
(and would bring for years to come).
passed in unremarkable ways—
but began and ended with his face
pressed down in an old feather pillow
that was remarkable indeed.
Beneath its clean cotton case
was the dark, drool-stained ticking
that told the pillow’s true age
and why on damp days
it held the scent of time
and the dank dreams of others deep inside.
The boy knew only that he liked
the way the pillow held his head.
He was unaware that long ago
on a different bed
his great-grandfather
had liked it for the same reason—
not ten, not twenty,
but more than
forty years before—
when it was purchased with a mate.
It was one of what had been a pair for two
‘til death left him to sleep alone.
And then he chose to use the pillow
that was hers and kept his own
on the high hidden shelf
of his corner closet.
By then the ticking had more than aged
—as all old pillows do.
Like a blotter, it was hopelessly imbued
with years of hair tonic,
and hot-night sweat,
and deep-sleep drool,
and toward the end…
the tears he did not touch for fear she'd know.
The pillow was a dark and blotchy parchment,
with all the variegated circle stains
of paper peeling from a mildewed wall.
(All this was hidden by the flannel case
that each night touched the little boy's face.)
Such an ancient, ugly sack of feathers
would never be deliberately given or received;
it would never be offered to a guest
or sold at a sale. For who would want to use it?
But life is full of things still kept
well past their being wanted,
and this was true of the old pillow
before it was the boy’s.
Just how the thing came to him
the boy would never know.
One morning he woke up and it was there.
He liked the way it slept;
he liked the way it kept
the form
of his face even as he rose
to look back down at where he’d been.
He liked the dreams of flying
that it brought that first night
(and would bring for years to come). But what happened was:
The day before the pillow came,
his family spent a warm fall day
at his Grandma’s.
Her house sat
on the corner
of Forest and Riverview,
a tired tract of broken streets
and pocked and painted clapboard walls
with faded-curtain windows
and front-porch steps that stretched
toward the narrow walk
of broken concrete slabs
that rolled unevenly
(like dominoes laid across a lawn),
heaved ever higher over time
by the roots
of chestnut trees that lined the way,
their shade the only remnant of the better days
the neighborhood had seen.
(The boy did not know the house, in fact,
was and always had been
his great-grandfather’s
whose daughter (the boy's grandma)
and her husband moved in with
when hard times called them home.
So long before that now it seemed
Great Grandpa was the guest,
and those who knew the difference never said.)
To the boy it was simply Grandma’s house,
and for his siblings and cousins
it was a magic place to be.
There they were allowed to walk
without grown-ups
to the tiny corner store
for ten cents worth
of long paper strips
with countless, clinging candy bumps
in pastel rows for nibbling off like mice.
Turning back toward the house
(and passing it a short block the other way),
they went to the park to play
and roll down grassy hills
'til someone called them home.
After all that and more that day…
the little boy was sitting
on the front porch
listening
to the melody of older voices
talking in the dark...
and fell asleep
right there
on the gray painted planks.
They laughed when they saw him
lying in the glow of the dresser lamp
beyond the front bedroom window.
His great grandfather slipped away
(to that lamp-lit room inside)
and came out with a pillow
that had been out of sight and mind for years.
“Here. Put this under his head at least.”
They laughed again.
The pillow had no case,
but in the dark,
its age spots went unnoticed.
When it was time to go,
the pillow floated with him
in his father's arms
from the old house to the car
and once at home up to his bed—
all without the glare of light—
and through it all
the boy was
dead to the world
as only children sleep.
From then on,
the pillow was the boy's to keep
(not that anyone but a four-year-old
would claim it as his own).
But even more remarkable
is
that this heavy feather pillow
remained
with him for more than twenty years.
It was on his bed when…
they moved from the country to the city;
still there through grade school;
still there when his little brother was born;
still there when he did paper routes at dawn.
Still there when they built the barn
and house on worn-out Saturdays.
It went with him to summer camps
and road-trips far away
and eventually...
to college, covered in a starchy new case.
There at night it was a touch of home
and brought him sleep
through love and loss and learning, too.
But what he never knew…
For no one ever does…
is that the pillow held and shared
forgotten dreams
and kept
him close to the past
and to things forever passing
and to those who gave them meaning.
Even when he married
the pillow was still kept with no more
thought
than had been given through the years.
But marriage is a time
for good and new and matching things,
and not for the inexplicable artifacts of life—
like this the nastiest pillow ever seen
that for decades avoided scrutiny
but whose sudden unsightliness
leapt out each time
they changed the sheets.
It was highly recommended not to keep—
and actually brought the man
a laugh in letting go—
that day the pillow passed
in some unremarkable way
like all the unremarkable days
it had absorbed.
.
Labels: dreams, feather pillow, great grandparents
posted by .Tom Kapanka | 11:40 AM
|
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