In a little less than two weeks my autobiography (it's really more like two or three typical memoirs mashed together... what can I say I've had a complicated life)
will be released. After more than ten years of on and off work it will at last be in the hands of readers, and then I guess we'll see what happens. I'm hoping and praying for at least ten people to buy a copy, whether the print edition or Kindle ebook, and enjoy reading it. That would make me extremely happy. A writer only needs one person to read what he or she has composed and to come away feeling like it was time well spent. That's who I've been laboring for: just one person, whoever he or she might be. But it will make me happy if more than that read and like it too!
So since we're in the home stretch leading up to publication, I thought I'd share a bit of it. What you're about to read is the opening to chapter five, which spans the course of a year between my being ten and eleven. A lot transpired in that period of time: some good but some of it not so pleasant. These first several paragraphs though convey one of the happier memories of my childhood. And it delights me to share it now...
There is a scene in the movie Citizen Kane where Mr. Bernstein mentions how sometimes a person will remember an occurrence without understanding why that particular memory is so vivid. He recalls how long years earlier he saw a girl in a white dress, carrying a white parasol. Bernstein saw the girl for just a fleeting moment, and she didn’t see him. But he confesses that there hasn't been a month that he hasn’t thought about her.
My “girl with a white parasol” moment happened on July 26th, 1984. And I doubt there has been a week since that she has not come to mind.
It was the summer after fourth grade. And it had been a grand one in my little world and beyond. Summer vacation began with a solar eclipse three hours after school let out. Between that and the start of fifth grade were two trips by my family to White Lake, the premiere of Ghostbusters, a Star Trek marathon, the race between Reagan and Mondale, the music… the summer of ’84 was on fire!
The family was at peace, that summer. I wasn’t in fear of anyone, and that felt good.
In the midst of all this my parents and sister and I took a trip north to visit our cousins. We left on Friday afternoon and made it to Virginia Beach late that night. The next day Dad drove us across the harrowing Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel. A few hours after taking the Cape May ferry to the southern tip of New Jersey we arrived in Point Pleasant, just in time for dinner with Bill and Mary.
We stayed with them until Wednesday. Then we left for somewhere that Mom and Dad said would be a place we would never forget: Amish Country.
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania was unlike anything I had ever expected to see. “Plain” folk were going about in their simple clothing and riding their horse-drawn buggies. We passed by a barn that was being built. All of this and more, a place that was incredibly out of time with the rest of the world… and I loved it!
“Is this just for the tourist trade?” I asked my parents. They insisted that the Amish really did live this way and had been for hundreds of years.
It was just before noon, following a morning of going on a guided tour of the area and being taught about the Amish and their culture. We decided that we needed lunch. We pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot. The four of us went inside and got in line.
And that’s when I saw her.
She was a little Amish girl. She must have been about ten, like me. Wearing a long blue dress and a white bonnet and black boots. She was waiting to be served at the counter also. And it was just such a strange juxtaposition, seeing a girl dressed like that in line at a modern fast food restaurant.
She was soooo incredibly cute. My heart began doing things it had never done before.
And then our eyes met one another’s.
She smiled at me and said “Hello.”
I had never seen anyone so beautiful.
“Hello,” I said clumsily.
She smiled again.
The Amish girl picked up her order. She said goodbye and with a whirl of her dress she was headed toward the door.
I watched her leave. I waited, hoping she would turn back around and smile one more time. At just the last moment she did and waved at me.
Encountering that Amish girl was the greatest thing that happened to me all that summer. And more than forty years later, I still think of her.
It was the noontide of my childhood. But I could not know that yet.
