I do, however, have some images from this morning that would have been perfect for yesterday's blog. What do you think?
I still love you Iris Moon
What damned fool puts eighty candles on a birthday cake? At this age I can't even get enough breath to spit. And if I did find enough wind for all of those candles I would probably just end up blowing my dentures onto the damned thing!
Lighting all of them required some planning. That means that Laura coordinated the effort. Even as a child she took control. Lord knows, she could get me to do anything she wanted. But that is probably because she was Rose and my first child.
As I look beneath the birthday pyre I see that the cake is home made. It is a little lopsided and covered in purple icing.
And I know one person whose favorite color is purple.
The inferno on the cake is dim compared to the big, bright eyes and exhuberant smile on the girl dressed in purple sitting across the table from me. Her excitement tells me all I need to know.
You don't get to be eighty by being stupid.
"Cristel, there are a lot of candles on this cake."
"There are eighty, Grampa Joe. Just like you!"
"Well, that sure is a lot. How about you and your friend Amanda help me blow them out? And I will tell you what, when you are eight years old, like you and Amanda, you get one birthday wish. When you get to be eighty, like I am, you get THREE birthday wishes. If you two help me out, we can each have a wish! On the count of three, one, two, three..."
As I watch these two eight year olds lean in to blow out the candles I am transported back seventy two years to when I was eight and there were only eight candles on the cake.
"...Happy Birthday dear Iris, Happy Birthday to you!" We all clapped as Iris leaned in to blow out the candles on her cake.
This is the first time that we have ever had a cake in class and Stuart Rosen said that Mrs. Moon had to go through holy heck to let us have it. Actually, he said that she went through holy H-E-double-toothpicks but I don't talk like that.
He said that our teacher, Mrs. Woods, didn't want us to have the cake because then everybody would want one on their birthday and some of the kids were poor and their parents couldn't afford it.
I don't believe that. Mrs. Woods is nice and she would want us to have cake.
Stuie is my best friend but he lies a lot. He said that Mrs. Woods has kids. That's not true, Mrs. Woods is a teacher and teachers don't have kids!
He also said that he saw his parents doing it and that they do it all the time. That's just dumb, parents don't do it. Well, maybe when they were young but not now. That's just gross.
Iris is new. She came to school in the middle of the year because her father works for a company that makes them move a lot. It's not like Timmy Decker's dad; he was in the Army and they moved a lot. Timmy said he didn't like moving and he wished he live in one place like we do.
Not me! I would go anywhere. I would start with the A's: Alaska, Antarctica, Africa...
While everyone is walking around and talking, I am sitting at my desk watching Iris Moon and thinking that she is the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world.
"Hey, whatcha doing there, lover boy?" I slam my book shut but he had already seen that I had written "Iris" a hundred times on the page.
"Cut it out, Stu." I made the mistake of telling Stu what I thought about Iris and he's been ribbing me about it ever since.
"Lover boy! Lover boy!" He taunts me for a while then turns to someone he likes to pick on more - Natalie Evans. Stu calls Natalie Peter Pans because two years ago on the field trip to the museum she peed her pants. "Hey Peter, where's Tinkle?"
He laughs but the joke isn't funny anymore. I tell him to leave her alone and he doesn't look happy about that. Stu can be pretty mean sometimes and I will probably pay for this later.
Mrs. Woods lets us have fun for a few more minutes then it's back to lessons.
On the walk home after school, we are a half-block behind Iris and her friends when Stu starts running up to them. Not knowing what he is up to, I take off running after him.
Stu is faster than I am and he runs up alongside of Iris and points back at me. I stop in my tracks because the next thing I see is Iris punching Stu in the nose and Stu falling to the ground. Iris glares back at me then stomps off with all of the other girls laughing and screaming and trying to catch up to her.
I stand over him and see that his nose is bleeding. "What was that about?"
"I thought it would be funny if I told her you were in love with her."
I wanted to scream at him and punch him myself but instead just looked at him on the ground and said, "Actually, it WAS pretty funny. How's the nose there, Joe Lewis?" I helped him up and gave him my hankie.
There was no way to undo what was done. Iris probably hated me but I still got woozy whenever I saw her.
During the last week of school before summer vacation I learned that Iris would be moving away. She had only been here for eight months and already she was leaving.
I was hoping to find a way to talk to her to tell her that what Stu had said wasn't true. Now, I would never get the chance. I just wanted to cry and the only place I could do that was The Fort.
The Fort really isn't a fort at all, it's just a ring of dead trees that are overgrown with kudzu. You can walk all around it and not know that there is an open space in the middle. To get in you have to crawl under the wall of kudzu. Once inside, it's quiet and you can see the sky.
I sit there crying, missing Iris before she is even gone.
At the sound of rustling in the entryway I wipe my eyes. The last thing I need is to have Stuart see me crying. I am just about to tell him to go away when I realize that it is not him crawling in, it's Iris.
She seems as startled to see me as I am to see her. We are both stammering and staring at each other.
She finally manages to say, "I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone knew about this place."
"The Fort? How did you find it?"
"Is that what you call it, The Fort?"
We started talking and she told me about how hard it is to move all of the time, to not be in any place long enough to make and real friends. Tears filled her eyes as she told me that she would be moving again.
We talked for a long time and she smiled when I promised that I would be her friend no matter where she moved. We could write letters and be pen pals.
It was getting close to dinner time and we both knew we had to go.
"Was it true?" she asked me.
"Was what true?"
"What Stuart told me," and she gave a little laugh, "before I punched him."
At that moment the whole world dropped out from under me. I wanted to say yes, yes it was true but I couldn't even breathe. I was so afraid that I would become Peter Pants - right here, in front of Iris.
I would like to tell you that I kissed Iris Moon but that would be a lie. The truth is that I stood there like a zombie while Iris Moon walked over and kissed me. On the lips!
Iris moved away before the start of fourth grade and we did become pen pals. We wrote faithfully through grade school and into high school. Communications became less frequent in college.
Iris married first. She invited me to the wedding in San Diego and I declined with best wishes claiming that the trip from the east coast would be too costly on a new teacher's salary.
I married Rose the following year.
After marriage, our communications were pretty much just Christmas cards and an occasional short note.
I haven't heard from Iris in many, many years now.
Maybe it's just an old man being silly but I will admit that I still think about that kiss and I wonder what it would have been like to really kiss Iris Moon.
I mean no disrespect, I loved Rose and I miss her dearly.
I never thought about it before but they were my two flowers: one cultured and cultivated, the other wild and free.
And after all of these years I can still say:
Yes, I still love you Iris Moon.
There is clapping and the smell of smoke and the past falls back to where it belongs.
"Grampa, why are you crying?"
"Because I am very happy, Cristel."
"What did you wish for Grampa? I wished for..."
"Shhh, little Cristel, wishes are best kept secret."
I love the words "pyre" and "inferno" on the cake.
ReplyDelete