From The Heart

My Great Aunt Leonie lives at the end of our street in a big yellow house right at the edge of town. Behind her house is a big wheat field—golden waves swishing back and forth, rippling as far as you can see. I am four and a half and get to go to her house all by myself. Early each morning the sun rises right behind her house and pops up over the roof—you can see it from my house if you wait.

I can’t wait! I have to run over to her house to taste homemade bread with yummy strawberry jam on top. I can’t wait to hear her sweet voice call out “good morning, my favorite Paula!” I reach up and grab the railing and pull myself up the big stairs onto the porch. When I open the screen door her eyes light up. They sparkle and are so clear. They are the kind of blue of the wide-open sky without any clouds.

Aunt Leonie and her stepdaughter, Flossie, who lives with her, talk about clouds all the time. The big white fluffy ones are my favorite. We lie in the cool grass in Aunt Leonie’s backyard in the shade of a big leafy tree and watch the clouds roll past. “There’s a dog!” “Can you see the clown?” “Where do the clouds go?” Aunt Leonie listens to me carefully, taking a moment to find just the right words before she speaks. “The clouds love to dance across the sky. When the air turns cold their fluffy soft forms begin to turn into water. When they get heavy enough raindrops or snowflakes fall down to earth from way up in the sky. When all the water is gone, so are the clouds.” I am happy with that answer—especially the dancing part.

We go inside through the screen door off the side porch. We come into a large room at the back of the house where Aunt Leonie lives. Her room is plain and comfy. The kitchen is at one end and in the other corner is a day bed covered with a quilt with a log cabin pattern. A while back when she was working on it she showed me how the pieces fit together to make little houses. When I get older she is going to help me piece a quilt. “You have to be old enough to have patience,” she tells me, “because making a quilt takes a long, long time”.

Behind the kitchen is the best room in the house, if you ask me. The pantry is its own long skinny room with a tall window at one end. There are lots of nooks and cranes in this room. On one wall there is a painted red counter running the full length of the room with cupboards above and below from floor to ceiling. This room is my favorite place to hide when we’re playing hide and seek. No one can ever find me. The floor in the pantry and in the big room is made out of boards. Braided rag rugs of various shapes and sizes cover worn spots and give the room a cozy feeling. I feel so comfortable right now I just want to crawl up on her bed and go to sleep.

Just then Aunt Leonie asks me, “would like to help me wash my hair?” She always wears her hair up on her head in a kind of bun, held up with hairpins. Every time she lets her hair down it is such a surprise! It is thick and white and a little curly and is so long it goes right down to where she might sit on it. I am always amazed how beautiful it is! Before she washes it she prepares a concoction that turns into a thick, blue liquid. “This will make my hair whiter. Otherwise it looks yellowish,” she explains. She shampoos her hair in the sink. I am standing on a chair next to her, far enough away not to get in her way but close enough to be able to spread the blue goo on her hair. The blue stuff is cold and she shivers as I gently pour it over her head. I take a wide-toothed comb and slowly pull the blue through her hair. Coating all the hair takes a long time because her hair is so long. Once all of it has been covered she sets a metal timer for 10 minutes and we wait. When the timer dings she rinses her hair under the sink and dries it in a thick white towel. She wraps the towel around her head and tucks it in on one side. It makes her not look like Aunt Leonie at all! After a while she takes the towel off and combs her hair out. Then she lets it “air dry” she calls it. When it is all dry she brushes it, counting each stroke out loud with me, “one, two, three, four...all the way up to one hundred!”

One morning I slip out of bed and run all the way to Aunt Leonie and Flossie’s. They are already outside filling little pocked aluminum buckets with water from a well-worn hose. I carry my bucket carefully through the tall grass so as not to spill one precious drop. The extra-wide gravel driveway that circles behind the house is where I’m going. I find a place to sit, put the little bucket by my side, and begin looking around for a beautiful rock. I find one and drop it into the water, sloshing it around.  When I reach in and pull it out, it sparkles like magic in the sun. I gasp at the surprise of it! I spend the entire day in the hot Kansas sun finding the most special rocks I can. My favorites are the arrowheads and the one I found that is kind of pink and is the shape of a heart. I wash each one until they glitter. I sort them carefully by size and shape. Then I arrange them on a flat place in the grass. I put the rocks into piles and rows and make a big city.                                                                                                               
Another day we bake sugar cinnamon crisps. I love helping! First flour is measured into a sifter and I am allowed to sift it into a big brown earthen bowl. Aunt Leonie and Flossy add other things and I get to stir it all together. The last time we did this I stirred too fast and a lot of the flour ended up on the floor and on me. This time I stir slowly. I end up with a large lump of yummy dough. Aunt Leonie doesn’t care how much dough I eat. She spreads flour on the counter and plops the dough into the middle. She hands me a long wooden rolling pin and I push the dough back and forth until it’s flat. We tear off pieces of dough and form them in our hands to make whatever shapes we want and lay them on the cookie sheet. Cinnamon and sugar are sprinkled over the tops and the pan goes into the oven. Aunt Leonie says this is the same dough she would make if she were going to make a pie. When we can just begin to smell it, Flossie opens the oven door and takes out the puffy golden shapes. We let them cool down then sit at the table laughing and telling jokes while we eat crisps with a large glass of cold milk.

Most summer afternoons, when the locusts are droning their noisy tunes, I sit between Aunt Leonie and Flossy on their huge wooden porch swing—so big my feet can’t even touch the floor. There is something wonderful about the warm arm around me that gently pulls me into the huge lump on Aunt Leonie’s side she calls her “hernia”. The metal links of the chains above us creak as we swing but we don’t hear it because we are singing. Loudly! “Old Susanna”.   “B-I-N-G-O”. “On Top Of Old Smokey”. “The Old Gray Mare”. My eyes glaze over with how good it feels to go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Aunt Leonie’s wobbly old-lady’s voice, Flossie’s deep clear one and my little girl’s high pitches—a bit too loud--form a choir, like angels singing in heaven.

I know some of the reasons why I can’t wait to be at Aunt Leonie’s. She enjoys hearing my stories and listens to every word. She is fun and likes me just the way I am. When I am here, I am happy. The things that make me feel bad seem to melt away. Here, it is different. When I am with Aunt Leonie, I know I have a place in the world. I belong.