When I Was A Kid...

When I was a just a kid in Macon, Georgia, I ate peaches so big that you had to spread all your fingers wide, just to hold them. And they were so full of juice that my sisters and I would take big bites, the fuzzy flesh against our pinked cheeks, and then laugh, leaning forward, as the sweet nectar drained down our faces.

When I was a just a kid in Macon, Georgia, we would pick fallen pecans off the huge tree. The nuts were mahogany brown with fine little black stripes running the length of the shells. When held in a sweaty hand, the shells would take on the deep hue of the stair rail, that ran from the floor to the sky, in our big house with its wraparound porch and its wide yard. That same pecan tree held our tire swings, her limbs so high, that we could throw our heads back and ride a thousand long slow arcs.

When I was a just a kid in Macon, Georgia, there was a family who lived in a ply board shack in the woods, way out behind our house. They were black as coal with pink nail beds and palms, white teeth-and the whites of their eyes- so much like moons in their dark faces. The mom washed clothes in a big pot over a wood fire. My sisters and I  thought she was a witch and we would crouch behind a rampant row of honeysuckle bushes and watch her stir and lift the steaming wads of clothes with a stick. She would hum as she worked. There was something oddly consoling in her rhythms.

When I was a just a kid in Macon, Georgia, we would while away the long summer days having tea parties. I remember putting sweet green grass in hot water and sipping it delicately, pinkies lifted. We would pick honeysuckle blossoms and suck the nectar. One afternoon, I plucked a blossom, grasped the delicate stamen and pulled it away from the petals. A tiny drop of clear nectar balanced on the stamen’s end, like the star on a magic wand. I pushed it through the steel diamond of the chain link fence where a black face waited. His tongue was impossibly pink as he licked the drop, smiled…and ran away.