A MAYWOOD MEMORY

My frozen toes burn and tears are rolling down my cheeks, as Mama  pulls wet socks off my nearly-frozen feet. I’ve been ice skating down Ninth Avenue at the flooded field made into a rink for the winter.

I can still see images of long Midwest winters in Maywood.  Large dirty patches of snowfall after snowfall  layered and packed into lumps of ice, making an unpleasantly ugly sidewalk from November to March. But it was the thrill of winter I remember the most: sledding, sinking my feet through a crust of snow over soft snow; watching the light sparkle in crystal formations on top of the snow;  and ice skating whenever I wanted to, just down the street.

The air was so cold the day my feet froze, I had to wear a scarf over my mouth and nose, so I could inhale. I was finished with an after school skate session and walking home; my eyes cast downward to protect them from the wind, were fixed on the treacherous sidewalks.  

I drop my wet mittens and my jacket frozen with ice patches on the entrance hall floor. They smell of damp wool as they thaw. That smell mingles with the cooking scents. The smells are scrumptious on Fridays especially. My mother and grandmother are preparing for Sabbath,  Bubbling steamy chicken soup, roasted brisket stuffed with garlic, cloves and bay leaves, yeasty dough rising in a big bowl permeate the room.. And Bubby  is baking a chocolate cake for breakfast.  I think those smells were imprinted in my nostrils. I can still see every object in our dining room where I sat with my feet in the tub. “Put them in slowly, Sherry” Mama warns me. She serves me hot chocolate while she thaws my red, white and blue toes, they burn and feel like needles are shooting into them from the inside.

Sometimes I think I would rather have that pain instead of the ache of wondering where the kids I grew up with are, or if they are still alive, and the irretrievable small town easiness of that place. Maywood has disappeared as I knew it. White flight and upward mobility has made it a place with no one from my childhood  to visit.

The cobblestone street disappeared the Summer of my ninth birthday, when the men came with the horrid smelly asphalt and smudge lanterns, while they paved and widened the street in front of our house. That made a thoroughfare for cars to speed on from one main artery to the next. They also removed some of the huge beautiful elm trees in the parking strips; Dutch elm disease finished off the rest.

Our grand crabapple tree was ripped out of our front yard by a tornado one morning, while my beloved grandfather was davening; he witnessed the whorl of destruction twist the tree and toss it away from our house. My grandparents are long gone; Daddy died ten years ago. My mother disappeared as I knew her after a stoke, or strokes deep in her brain. For the eleven years she lived that way, she was like Maywood , there but not there. She died last June.

The further I get from my childhood, the more I want connection to it.  I am now being my mother!  Baking the same foods, creating the same warmth, applying her wisdom retains the most important connections: a legacy. I still hear my mother’s gentle admonishments to me, as I dipped my frozen toes into the warm water basin: “Take it slowly Sherry.”  I know that I need to take every moment slowly and savor the precious time that is Now. And I know  loss is sweetened by the fact that I had, and have, so much to lose.