CREEK ROAD GANG
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Archaeology
Patricia Zita Krisch
copyright 2009
My daughter, Maria, is now twenty-five, lives a thousand miles away, and is only home for short visits. Gradually I have moved my writing space into her bedroom, but most of the room is still set up for her: bed, dresser and books on the shelves.
The desk we bought her when she was eleven was listing to one side, so my husband and I recently bought a new one for me. Before we could install it, I had to clean out Maria’s desk. With her permission I spent an evening boxing its contents.
Here I found: colored pencils and a pad of drawings of girls’ faces with different hairdos; a middle school ID card; a small book, Whales and Their Friends; a hair brush; and long balloons to twist into animal shapes. There was a collection of rocks, each carefully wrapped; a compass and protractor; a blue book exam in inorganic chemistry. Further down I uncovered origami birds and boxes, assorted sea shells, pictures of her friends at age twelve, and beads and wires for making earrings for those friends.
Suddenly, I am flung back to the days when her best treat was for me to drive her and a girlfriend or two to the local shopping center on a Saturday. I drop them off, in full giggle, so they can prowl the stores with no adult in tow.
I look under the bed where a guitar and a keyboard still live, artifacts of the wonderful years when our daughter lived with us: trading secrets on the phone with her friends, flopped across her bed reading, doing homework while her cat sits on the bed keeping her company. In my mind I see her racing up the street for the school bus--her hair wet--putting on earrings as she goes.
I know if I look under the table skirt near the door I’ll find the dismantled telephone that her father gave her to figure out how it worked. If I look in her closet I’ll find a cowgirl hat, now too small; fuzzy unicorn bedroom slippers, also too small; and a surfeit of rocks. Somewhere in the closet drawers there is a pair of sparkly fairy wings.
Just now I need to leave those treasures undisturbed.
The desk we bought her when she was eleven was listing to one side, so my husband and I recently bought a new one for me. Before we could install it, I had to clean out Maria’s desk. With her permission I spent an evening boxing its contents.
Here I found: colored pencils and a pad of drawings of girls’ faces with different hairdos; a middle school ID card; a small book, Whales and Their Friends; a hair brush; and long balloons to twist into animal shapes. There was a collection of rocks, each carefully wrapped; a compass and protractor; a blue book exam in inorganic chemistry. Further down I uncovered origami birds and boxes, assorted sea shells, pictures of her friends at age twelve, and beads and wires for making earrings for those friends.
Suddenly, I am flung back to the days when her best treat was for me to drive her and a girlfriend or two to the local shopping center on a Saturday. I drop them off, in full giggle, so they can prowl the stores with no adult in tow.
I look under the bed where a guitar and a keyboard still live, artifacts of the wonderful years when our daughter lived with us: trading secrets on the phone with her friends, flopped across her bed reading, doing homework while her cat sits on the bed keeping her company. In my mind I see her racing up the street for the school bus--her hair wet--putting on earrings as she goes.
I know if I look under the table skirt near the door I’ll find the dismantled telephone that her father gave her to figure out how it worked. If I look in her closet I’ll find a cowgirl hat, now too small; fuzzy unicorn bedroom slippers, also too small; and a surfeit of rocks. Somewhere in the closet drawers there is a pair of sparkly fairy wings.
Just now I need to leave those treasures undisturbed.
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Biographical Note: Patricia (Patty) Zita Krisch grew up in Sacramento, California, and lived for many years in Chicago and for more years in suburban Philadelphia. She is currently completing a book, A House Alive with Words, about a cohort of boys living in a residential A Better Chance program to prepare for college. In an earlier time in her life she worked as a demographer studying metropolitan population patterns and taught college sociology classes. She has been a member of Virginia Newlin’s autobiographical writing workshop class for thirteen years and wrote a memoir about her mother, The Solace of Clothes. She also writes occasional autobiographical pieces of which this is one.
