blueprint

we visited our maryland folks this weekend. i never really thought about what it is that makes me love them. i guess i should have known.

1. we arrive, like we have before, around midnight. we have driven all the way from the big city with a thunderstorm scrambling to keep itself ahead of us. we bring the rain, just a little, enough to make the mounds of honeysuckle growing all along the fence stretch out tendrils of sweetness. it is too dark to see the goats or the chickens but they are there in little animal houses beyond where the porch light gets. the windows are open and there are peonies and what my grandma would call pinks sitting in windows and on tables. they are crowded up next to sidewalks outside those windows, too.

i am seven or maybe nine and my sisters are in the bath but i have already bathed and am standing in homemade seersucker shorty pajamas guzzling down the last of my grandma's iced tea. i put the empty glass back on the coaster and crawl between sheets that have lived some time on a clothesline. the windows are open and crickets compete with cicadas over who will sing us to sleep. there are prayers and stuffed animals. the peonies under the window seep into the room and from time to time, when the wind feels like it, there is honeysuckle.

2. i have no business in the preparation of breakfast. but these other three, they know secrets and can tell how long something should cook before it is done. one is standing over eggs from those copper chickens outside. fresh eggs, like nothing you know about if you buy yours in a store. another, the sweetie, tends to bacon and sausage on a griddle. the third mixes up waffle batter and pours it into sizzling heart-shaped molds. and i stay still, out of the way. i tend to the dogs or put things on the table, but mostly i lean against the wall reeling from the pleasure of being in a kitchen with three cooks.

i am ten or twelve or fifteen and my mom and grandma and sisters are happily whirling around the kitchen, purposeful. there is singing. aretha franklin. patsy cline. maybe freddy fender. wasted days and wasted nights... everyone in the room sings and cooks. there are men in the other room. my dad. uncles, a grandfather or two. cigarettes and a cigar. talk of golf. talk of phones and bowling. i do not speak the language of either room but i set the table and fold paper towels and listen to how pretty everything sounds.

3. we drive with the windows down in a red station wagon on country roads with speed limits ranging from 40 to "was that a cop?". one friend drives, the sweetie fiddles with the ipod while the other friend and i can't hear anything going on in the front seat. we sing along with the music to songs from our youth and to pavement and everything in between. we sing like wild, drunken sailors and our words whip out the windows with our hair but we keep singing. when townes van zandt starts singing "pancho and lefty" we all sing a little softer, maybe out of respect for old townes and how we're not so sure whether he was pancho or lefty but it's just damned sad either way. but we put our hands out the windows, not all of us at the same time, but one or the other of us, or maybe two folks, and the wind washes over us and the songs wash over us and i don't really care where we drive off to.

it could be any time in my life. there is a truck. an old blue one. a newer orange and silver one. we are in the back of the truck, all three of us, skinny, knobby-kneed girls in calico print halter tops and cutoff shorts. we have worn sneakers out of the house but they have escaped our brown feet somewhere between the front porch and the truck. dad is driving and mom sits beside him. we are blonder this time of year than other times. the sun is in us all the time. our parents talk about parenty things there in the front seat but we hear none of it. the middle sister and i sit on the wheel wells and hold on to the side of the truck. the baby sits flat on the bed of the truck. the wind whips our hair into our eyes so we squint against it. we sing at the top of our lungs. maybe loretta lynn. maybe buck owens. maybe ruby, don't take your love to town.

4. we stop by a farm market/flea market the two friends enjoy and begin wandering around. at one booth one friend buys some lovely bird coasters. i decide to splurge and drop a buck fifty on set of bridge cards (i know nothing about bridge) because i like the goldenrod decoration and the silky tasseled pencils. we look at furniture and painting of ships. when i catch sight of a stack of books with names like all about the weather, all about the desert and all about monkeys i tell the friends to watch what happens when the sweetie comes up. he will not be able to resist them, educational books from the fifties with beautiful illustrations and serious explanations. and when i show him the stack of eleven books and ask which ones he'd like he shouts, "get them all!" and the friends smile. when he adds to the stack a world war two poster printed in 1946, they smile a little more. we are flea market people, all of us.

my dad parks the truck and we climb out over the tailgate. we walk across the street into the huge, open warehouse where vendors have set up booths selling everything, most of it worthless. this is where the middle sister gets her dolls. molly pitcher. sam clemens. clara barton. babe ruth. susan b. anthony. they are floppy dolls in historically informational boxes and she lines them up on a shelf in her bedroom. some days i buy miniatures from this same man. tiny animals or furniture for no reason i can think of now. mice with whiskers that look like eyelashes. there is always the smell of food and usedness. my dad looks at jewelry and pocket knives and tools. i could roam around this place forever.

5. we play cards. there are six of us. me, the sweetie, our two friends and a couple they know who ate dinner with us. my belly is full of red meat and there is a glass with honeyed bourbon on the table next to me. i do not have to keep score. there is a dog asleep under my feet and one at the other end of the table. there is music, always just loud enough for me to be aware it is there, a soft blanket around everything. the cards slide across the table. they snap when someone shuffles. i pick my cards up as they are dealt because i cannot wait. there is laughter over the music and at least once i laugh so hard i cannot breathe.

it is late and summer and my grandmother has put roy clark in the tape deck. the leaf is still in the table from supper and she and my grandpa sit across from each other. my parents occupy the other two chairs. they play pinochle while i use poker chips to make blueprints of the houses i will build all across the living room carpet. there is cigarette smoke and the sound of beanbag ashtrays and ice clinking and clinking. the baby sister is tired, has had enough of all this ruckus. she crawls under the table, presses her face to the cool tops of our mother's feet and goes to sleep.