Sweet Pea and the Daddy Long Legs

I.

I almost lost my tongue when I was eight years old
When I fell what must have been a hundred feet
From a swing overlooking
A slight hill covered in dead leaves.

Scratches on my hands and chin
And sore teeth made me think that I
Couldn’t have fallen any further if I tried.
And I could have tried.
I could have flung myself out
Across the lake across the road
Where we fished with cornflake crumbs
And a piece of seaweed tied to a stick.
I could have flung myself over and across
The hedges and the fence and the stone wall
To the neighbor’s house, and they
Would have received me with tea
And cookies I couldn’t eat.

It was the result of overambition,
Both on my part and my father’s.
He wanted to see my feet soar so high
In the air that I would come back down
And tell him about my conversations with the birds.
I only wanted my first
Taste of circus life, so I begged him
To please attach a trapeze bar to the green plastic
Swing in the backyard,
So I could slide off the seat of the swing
In midair and, white knuckled,
Suspend myself in the wind.
This may have been his idea and not mine.

When we drive by,
I wonder what the new children did
With the swing, which was never
How we had left it, with the trapeze still attached,
But instead presumably tucked away into some dark cellar
In which I was never allowed.


II.

I knew even then that daddy longlegs could kill you
If their teeth were sharper.
If a daddy longlegs bit me, it would be as if
It was biting a brick wall.
The thought made my teeth ache.
I kept them as pets in the fort in my backyard
That my father made for me out of duct tape
And two giant cardboard boxes
That had once held watermelon in the supermarket.
He asked for them one day when we went
To buy lunch meat; they kept them around back
Where they unloaded all the food from the trucks.
He asked nicely and they gave him two.

After a week my fort was damp
And pine needles carpeted the bottom, just like
Everything else.
After the rains,
The daddy longlegs came.
I gave them names and watched them crawl
Around the edges, trying to escape,
And I was fiercely proud that I was not
Afraid.
The daddy longlegs stayed until daddy
Took the fort apart, saying it was moldy
And soggy. I asked him to make me
Another one, and he agreed,
But he never did.
I was not angry.

I found the daddy longlegs again
Scrambling through the pine needles
On the front porch.


III.

I had heard of kids
Getting sucked down the drain,
Alligators crawling up and eating
Their toes while they sat
And splashed contentedly in the bath.
I knew that this drain in particular was big enough
To compromise my safety, and that either of
These scenarios was very possible. In the bath,
I kept an eye on the tan rubber drainstop
To make sure it stayed in place.
The bathtub always smelled like mildew
And old skin.

When I finished my bath,
My mother would swaddle me in a giant
Green bath towel, a warm reward
For another bathtub tragedy heroically avoided.
My father would carry me in his arms
To my bedroom, which I shared with no one,
And he would turn on my lava lamp for me
So the soft green glow would comfort me if
I woke up in the night.
I was small enough to get lost
In his arms, but not small enough
To slip down the drain.


IV.

Together, my father, my mother
And I (as my brother looked on,
Sleepily),
We dug a hole
So deep I could stand in it and watch the world
Through the grass.
I pulled out stone after large, grey stone
Until my fingernails were ragged and brown
(Which made me proud)
And my father made a joke about God
Throwing rocks at New England on the seventh day.

We filled it with dark brown earth
And earthworms
And planted morning glories and sweet peas
(My namesake)
And vegetables, at my mother’s request
And in perfect accordance with my backwoods farmgirl dreams
In which I made my own clothing and cooked
For the whole family.

My father never forgave them for letting the garden
Wither away. He talks still
About the garden, and the insulation he installed
In the damp basement, and the attic he cleaned,
And the holes in the clapboard he patched,
And the mothball smell he had to shake out of his clothes
At the end of every summer.

I don’t remember watering our garden,
But I do remember waiting for the paper-thin
Pods of morning glory seeds
To dry out
So I could crack them open and scatter them
Into the wind
Which, somehow, was always much more satisfying
From my uncle’s terrace overlooking Madison Avenue
Than from my backyard in Monterey
Overlooking an empty dirt road.