ON A DAY THAT WE DON'T have field hockey, Christine and I have just gotten back from study hall, where we've worked hard on math homework for the past half hour. Sometimes we goof off or spend the time looking up our crushes' houses on Google Maps, but today it's important to work. I have a busy afternoon ahead.
So we hang around until dismissal, where I head not to my bus room, but to the fourth grade classroom, where car riders are picked up. Often, Ben is there too, because he's got piano lessons after school---I always try and muster up the courage to say goodbye to him but will never succeed.
I have lessons too, sort of. Do I? It's hard to explain, but why try?
It's the usual scene. The teacher in charge of the chaos, aka my math teacher and academic advisor, tries to quiet the students by doing the "3, 2, 1" countdown, and when that doesn't work, she forbids them to talk at all. If they're good, maybe they'll earn "whisper voices" back, but most likely they won't. It's the same story every time.
Soon, I hear my name over the walkie-talkie the teacher is holding up. I pick up my bag and go downstairs and outside to wait for my grandma's car to reach the front of the line. Ten minutes later we'll pull into the Melody Lane entrance and she'll mess around and go, "Hmm, I wonder who lives here?" We riff off this until we pull into the driveway.
The first order of business is snacks: either chocolate chip Pepperidge Farm cookies or Potato Sticks, complete with Sunkist orange soda with a straw. (Later on, the snack will become a chocolate-dipped Dove ice cream bar.) We'll sit around the little round table in the center of the little kitchen, play some Go Fish, or, later on, Sorry. Then we'll play a few rounds of UNO until around 4:30.
Grandpa gets here around that time. Before we leave, Grandma sends me off with a couple of dark Dove chocolates for the road. And we're off to our destination.
I'm going to see a friend.
****
Visiting Miss B started with a recommendation from...probably a teacher from much younger days or some other authority figure, believing as a young child that it would help me. Remember when my teachers noticed my lack of wanting to play with other people at times? This may have been a result.
Her work generally helps kids with disabilities, as well as some others. I still go to her house, but now we're more like friends. Besides, I'm convinced that anyone else who visited her house would want to do it every week, too.
I'm not sure of her age--I asked once, my young self not knowing what was inappropriate. But if I had to guess, I'd say mid to late fifties, but regardless, she's always welcoming. She used to wear headscarves in the early days, but not anymore. These days, she wears nothing in her hair, the shoulder length brown hair teased out, but can still almost always be seen wearing long cotton skirts and Sketchers.
But the real trademark has to be her South African accent. She's the first person I've ever met who is from Africa. The living room to the right of the foyer reflects this: wooden carvings adorn the simple room as does a map of the continent on the wall.
Sometimes we start by baking bread. It's a time-honored recipe of flour, yeast, and water. Sometimes we make it into pretzel shapes as we talk about our lives, with her toy poodle, Pebbles, weaving around our legs on the brown-orange tile floor. On other days, we make French fries, straight from potatoes that we peel ourselves. But a lot of our visit is just spent talking.
"What is your News of the Week?" she asks, as we roll the bread dough into snakes. This is the hardest part of the hour, in my opinion. What did I do that was interesting? I went to school, and Christine came over, but that was about it. Nothing really warrants a report. But I really don't want to go away to boarding school, so I talk about that.
We graduate in eighth grade at Quaker school, and most of my classmates are looking at various private schools in the area. I am too, but I don't care for my choices. She fills me in on a recent trip to South Africa. When she was my age, she had two choices: go to boarding school or stay home and learn Afrikaans, the language the lessons were in. Neither sounded particularly great and makes my choice pale in comparison.
If it's summer, we'll swim in the pool, which is the loveliest swimming hole I've ever seen, a long saltwater rectangle protected by bushes and vines growing all around the fence for total privacy. The pool opens early in May and doesn't close until October, and it's one of my favorite places to swim.
The worst part of the summer is worrying about whether it will rain, slowly willing the dark clouds to blow away on the 40-minute drive from my house, or if there's a Jewish holiday, when Miss B can't swim. She follows the religion very closely, more than other Jewish people I know, and sometimes I'm the only one in the pool because of it. In the pool, we do many things. I love to sit on a rubbery blue raft. Occasionally a basketball hoop will come out, or we'll play a game of makeshift Frisbee with me in the pool and her out. We also might have a race.
The real draw, however, is the basement. Packed with giant inflatable balls, swings, an air hockey table, floor mats, a ramp with a little scooter that you lie on to climb up said ramp, a tiny wooden jungle-gym fort, and even a moon bounce, it's a play wonderland.
We spend lots of time doing various exercises and activities on these apparatuses, though I don't know the point of all of them. I hate the one where I have to lay on a scooter and push myself up the ramp. It reminds me of the little scooters that kill your fingers in gym class. I do like to balance on a teeter-totter-like ramp.
Sometimes I roll around on one of the large, rubbery balls that's bigger than I am. I'm not sure what the point of these exercises and activities is, but they help to pass the time. I used to like swinging from the swing, which latches onto a hook from the ceiling, and imagined how easy and interesting it would be to create an indoor swingset. I'm too big for that now, and so the swing is replaced with a longer, flat swinging board called "the boat." Some things aren't as fun though: pulling my body up the ramp with the scooter isn't one of my favorite things to do, but it's decent exercise. I did that more often when I was younger.
Many apparatuses in the basement also come with quirky names. A long, foam, cylinder bar hangs from two places on the ceiling where I can ride on it. We call it "the pony." A brown mass of inflatable shiny plastic sits in the corner, called "the mud": I can jump from the balance beam onto it. There are small, squishy circles with smooth and pointy ends that I sometimes stand on, which we call "pizzas."
We don't focus on the point of these things, though. Mostly we just talk about our lives as we do seemingly mindless activities to get some exercise. There's not much else to add there.
In the past, during summers, other friends come to visit as our times overlapped. For a while it was a kid named Rick, who was older than me. We sometimes played air hockey and his rough style of play was a little much for me to take. Another girl was named Kendra, and we loved to play in the moon bounce together, sitting inside as it deflated. We sometimes worked on needlepoint together as well.
The last quarter is reserved for Project Time. I used to love doing etchings of Barney characters, even though I was well past that age and found Barney creepy, just because it was my own little tradition. Now we do needlework. Before that, though, the timer will go off and she'll go upstairs to check on the French fries while I get the materials ready.
I've already finished a bookmark, and started a latch hook rug with a dog on it, among other things. Today we're going to be working on the latch hook rug, and I'm still struggling to not get the hook tool snagged in the grid on occasion. It's fun, but could I work on it at home myself yet? That's the goal.
The hardest part of needlepoint is threading the needle. Miss B usually does this for me, but with latch hook rugs, there's no needle. The biggest risk is getting the needle snagged in between the fibers of the gridlines. Ms. B reminds me to keep good posture, and I continue on. Now, I'm ticking along myself, but since we only do this for about 15 minutes a day, progress is slow.
The hour hits six and the session ends. It's time to go upstairs to greet my dad. I'm reminded of when Miss B told me all about a kid who refused to come upstairs at the end, and she had to turn the lights out. It really gets dark down there--there are no windows.
We talk for a while when my dad comes to pick me up, but one more person is still coming to visit that day. It's Drew, a kid I attend school with who is four grades below me. We greet each other as I'm on my way out. Miss B gives me some of the bread we made, warm and wrapped in tinfoil. It's warm to the touch on this crisp evening and I can't wait to dig in.
But I can't spoil my appetite. There is a Chick-fil-A on the way home and I am lucky to get dinner there once a week. I always get some nuggets for lunch the next day, too ,which I'll enjoy at lunch tomorrow while talking with Christine about our dreams from tonight. And I think back to last night's activities, looking forward to next Wednesday.
***
Wednesdays are like many periods in my life: seemingly long and then---POOF!---gone just like that.
By the time I get to college, weekly visits to Ms. B's are impossible. Even summer visits are harder to come by with my internship and vacation plans. When I come to visit the summer before sophomore year of college, I step out of the pool and look at the aqua-tinted water before leaving. When will I see this private garden again?
So far, that's been never.
But memories remain. My college has a great occupational therapy program, which is Ms. B's line of work. Sometimes I'll see students working with young kids on moving their bodies up a ramp, or riding the "boat." I'll think back to Ms. B and what she might be doing now.
Sometimes Miss B and my mom meet for coffee. They've gotten to know each other quite well throughout the years; Emily has gone to see her too, but with more structured activities. Other times, we correspond by email. She is the world's fastest emailer, and the pressure is always on to respond! But as it usually does, life happens, and at some point, I no longer receive emails.
These visits will stay with me for a long time. These days, my Wednesdays are spent working or watching my school's sports games which are enjoyable if not productive, or going to my writing workshop, or eating dinner at my parents' place on Oak Drive. But they're just not the same. I think that everyone should have a good friend like Ms. B. Older, maybe unconventional, but a good dispenser of wisdom and a source of chit-chat, and someone who can expose you to new cultures and ideas. And a great swimming pool, of course. When I think back to my past friendships, Ms B. has definitely cemented a place among them.