A few weeks ago, I wrote about the memory map writing exercise my husband was using in a memoir workshop he was teaching. He had me do the exercise so he could use mine as an example in class.

In a nutshell, I was to draw a map of the street where I lived as a child, then jot down the fragments of memories about the people and places that came to mind as I sketched out my map. I had such a good time with the exercise that I filled several pages. I used some for a column, then asked readers to do a map of their own and share some of their memories. 

I love when readers write to share their ideas, comments, and stories, and the responses I received from this column were especially touching.

John Pritchard of Huntington wrote of the neighborhood he grew up in during the ’40s and ’50s.  “I still remember the neighbor’s names and memories of each. Next door was the head cashier at a local bank that gave my brother and me a dollar every Christmas, always in a different form (silver dollars, all new dimes, shiny quarters; once a hundred pennies). There were plumbers, factory workers and salesmen living in the houses surrounding us. I only remember one woman working outside the home, and she was my second grade teacher.

 “A creek–or crick if you will–ran behind our house. We called it Two Pole as it ran into Four Pole. It was smaller, and that made sense. In the creek were tadpoles, minnows and crawdads that were meant for Mason jars, later to be released to make room for fireflies.”

  He wrote of the Victory Gardens and chicken coops some families had on the other side of the creek. “After WWII, some abandoned their chicken coops. Could there be a better clubhouse? Little brothers and those who wanted to join the club were ‘helpful’ in sweeping out and whitewashing the coops. (We didn’t read Tom Sawyer for nothing.)”

 Debra Cantley of Charleston shared memories of her own childhood in Akron, Ohio, where every Friday as she reached the end of the block where they lived, she could smell bread baking and knew it was coming from their house. It was something her grandmother did every Friday, and to this day, she says the smell of break rekindles that memory. 

“I have a special place in my heart for that house,” wrote Cantley. “I remember falling out of the apple tree in the back yard, and as soon as I was home from the hospital, I went right back up in that tree-cast and all. I remember playing jacks, jumping rope in the driveway, and learning to ride my first bike on the sidewalk. 

“I lived in that house with my grandmother until I was married,” Cantley continued. “I went back there last year. The house has been condemned and is being torn down. It’s like the house couldn’t continue with my grandmother gone.” 

Another reader, Chris Henry, shared memories of her childhood home. “I grew up in Cleveland in the ’50s and ’60s. My backyard was large with a long, wide driveway perfect for skating and bicycle riding. There were probably a dozen kids on my street and our favorite place to play was an overgrown lot on the corner with a broken down crabapple tree that made a great playhouse. We played Tarzan and ‘wild horses’ and had crabapple wars with the boys. 

“We played kickball in the street; learned to swim at the city pool; picked peaches from our neighbor’s tree–and when the skinny, red-headed girl found a worm in hers, she screamed, ‘Snake! Snake!’ and threw down her peach. We teased her mercilessly.”

 Melissa Keller of Dunnsville, Virginia, wrote of growing up in southern West Virginia, where she and her brothers and cousins would take picnic lunches packed by their moms and head off into the woods, along with their family dog, Major. 

“It was not unusual for the boys to run off and leave us girls to find our own way, perhaps thinking maybe they’d get lucky and we would get lost. But we knew as long as we had ol’ Major, we’d find our way home,” wrote Keller. 

Some days, Keller said she and the other kids would go into the woods to play house. “We would pick an area and sweep the dirt clean, then find rocks to section off rooms. Large rocks and boards were our furniture. Using jars they found in the cellar, the boys would round up stuff for the girls to can, like the pods from trees and bushes that looked like green beans and peas. We also made trips to the ‘grocery store,’ which was actually my Dad’s workshop, to ‘buy’ other supplies.

“Children today have opportunities and technology that we never could’ve imagined,” wrote Keller. “But I wouldn’t trade my childhood memories for any of that.”

 And neither would I.  

This week’s column is going to be about rats.

My daughter, Celeste, wrote the line just above. She’s determined for rats to be my subject, although I told her I’m not so sure I want the world to know we have rats. I mean, we don’t get a lot of company as it is, and we’re still new to the neighborhood and all.

If you’re worrying that we have a rat infestation, it’s not that at all. We actually paid good money to have rats in our house.

Well, Celeste did. It was her money. Rats are surprisingly affordable. Only $6 each.

Yes, I said “each.” We can’t seem to do animals in the singular form. Our ark now includes two dogs, two rats, and three cats. As I’m typing these words, one of those rats, Lucy, is nearly asleep in the pocket of my shirt, scrunched in a tight U-shape, clutching the end of her tail in one delicate hand. She is-dare I say it-quite beautiful.

This is hardly the first time I’ve been charmed by a rat, but those before these walked on two legs (and were far less concerned about fitness, grooming, and leafy green vegetables). 

Over the years, I’ve had my share of the more socially acceptable rodents as pets, among them a lecherous teddy bear hamster named Phred (who pressed his face to the glass of his aquarium each time I undressed) and a pair of mice (Starsky and Hutch, though they should’ve been Oscar and Felix since one was a prissy neatnick and the other a slob), but never a rat. Still, I’ve always been curious about them, especially after hearing their virtues being so highly touted by Evelyn, one of my classiest and most intelligent friends. So after Celeste and I recently watched a show about rats and she immediately began campaigning for one, I said, “Ask Geoff.”

It was, I admit, one of those parental lobs. I fully expected Geoff to say no. I would’ve actually laid money on him saying no. In our house, his is often the voice of reason, the voice that can gently explain that we already have enough pets.

Instead: “Sure. Rats are great. I’m all about rats.”

There was actually more to it than that. Celeste had research to do, information to acquire, money to save. She considered ease of cleaning and the comfort and space requirements of two rats when choosing their cage. She didn’t cheap out. There are likely some college freshmen out there who would kill for similar accommodations.

But nothing’s too good for Lucy and Ethel.

Lucy is boisterous, friendly, and affectionate. A true shoulder rat. When you put your hand in their cage, she steps on like elevator doors have just opened and she’s ready to ride. If given a choice between food and human attention, she chooses attention.

Ethel chooses food.

Ethel and I have much in common.  Food, sleep, and quiet are treasured. That whole wheel/treadmill thing–not so much.

We had nearly given up on them ever using the wheel (”With guaranteed tail-safe shield!”) since for the first few weeks, neither showed any interest. Then this Monday, close to midnight, an exhausted-looking Celeste stumbled into our room.

“Lucy discovered the wheel,” she said.

“Sure she did,” said Geoff. “Did she discover fire, too?”

“Ha, ha,” said my sleep- and humor-deprived daughter as she confiscated my earplugs.

Maybe that’s why she was so determined for me to write about rats. So her friends and teachers will understand the reason behind those dark circles under her eyes.

       

Some friends and I were swapping parenting stories last week when my buddy, Ric Cochran, shared the following anecdote.

“When my son, Nic, was in second grade, about 7 years old, we moved to Florida from Marietta,” Ric said. “The move was kind of tough for him. We had no family there, and he missed having relatives around. He especially missed his cousin, Kristin, who was 12 or 13 at the time and he absolutely idolized her. Thought she was the greatest.

“So we’re living in Florida and Nic’s missing his cousin, and one day, while Nic was in school, Kristin and her family showed up for a visit. It was just too perfect an opportunity to let pass.

“I’ve always liked doing magic tricks. Mostly just simple slight-of-hand, make-the-coin-disappear and reappear sort of things, but I was always mixing it up and adding new tricks. Except in Nic’s eyes, they weren’t tricks. He completely believed I was capable of magic.

“Anyway, I got Kristin to hide in the bathroom and I hung a blanket over the door, and just a few minutes later, Nic got home. Of course, he immediately noticed the blanket and asked why it was there, so I told him I’d been practicing a new trick-making a person appear.

“‘Any person?’ Nic asked.

“‘Not just any person,’ I said. ‘It’ll only work if it’s the one person you want to see more than anyone else. And you might as well pick someone who lives far away. If I’m going to do this, let’s make it worthwhile.’”

  “It really wasn’t all that hard to lead a kid his age where I wanted him to go,” said Ric. “Plus we’d just been talking about Kristin and I knew she’d been on his mind, so I wasn’t surprised at all when he said her name.

“‘Good choice!’ I told him, and then I started waving my hands around and doing the whole hocus-pocus bit, which was Kristin’s cue to crouch down right behind the blanket. I finally stopped and got quiet for a few seconds, then I told Nic to yank down the blanket. When he did, Kristin popped up. Nic’s eyes went wide and his arms started trembling, then his whole body started shaking.

“It took a while before he calmed down enough to be able to speak, but when he could, he turned to me and asked, ‘Do you have enough magic left to get Grandma here, too?’”

Even after becoming older and wiser and understanding what the magic actually was, some children still hold on to their belief that their parents are capable of just about anything. Ric says his son, now a freshman at Capital University in Columbus, OH, often still looks at him with that same blind faith he had as a child-like his dad has the power to make anything happen.

I’ve noticed my daughter does that with me, too. It’s a responsibility I never thought about before becoming a mom-the duty parents have to know a little about everything, to be able to fix anything, to generally achieve the impossible on a regular basis. It’s something I took for granted about my own parents, who really <I>do<P> know a little about everything, are capable of fixing just about anything, and really <I>can<P> achieve the impossible. I don’t know how they do it, they just do.

They set the bar high. They’re a tough act to follow.

But I hope someday it’s going to be just as tough for Celeste.   

As my husband, Geoff, prepared his materials for a workshop he was teaching on memoir research and writing, he decided to include an exercise that “harnessed visual artistry to memory.” Since it’s sometimes hard to get the writing ball rolling, he asked if I would do the exercise so he could use it as a example in class.  

“Draw a map of the street you grew up on,” he said. “Just sketch out something rough, marking any places that were important to you.”

That part was easy. I grew up on 21st Street in Nitro, not quite halfway between the old high school and Ridenour Lake. As I worked on my map, I began noting the houses where my friends lived, the field near the lake where we played football, the culvert where we caught the ugliest catfish I ever saw in my life. I drew a circle where the water tower was, and guessed at the spot a little ways above it where I remember finding a small family cemetery, in the middle of nowhere. 

While I was still working on my map, Geoff said, “Now start writing down some of the memories that come to you while you’ve been drawing. Don’t try to get fancy. Just write it as it comes to you. Describe your neighborhood, who lived where, who did what, how they died. Were there places you weren’t allowed to go? Why not? What did you like best? What neighbors did you dislike? Who gave out the best candy on Halloween?”

His last question was the easiest–the Cookes. One time, they gave out full-size Marathon candy bars, causing me to sort of become the stray dog they’d fed. Except I was only allowed to beg at their door once a year.

Writing about the places I liked best was much harder, not because they were few, but too many. There was our backyard-long and mostly flat. Perfect for kickball. At the bottom end of our yard was a creek, and ours had the best spot for damming. Lots of rocks. Not too deep. Easy bank to go down. Best of all was the bridge Dad built from old railroad ties. My friends and I would sit on that bridge, legs dangling over, skipping rocks and watching minnows (and trying to spit on skitterbugs). 

Not far from the bridge was our tree house with a tire swing attached. Two more favorite places right there. And then there was the trapeze branch on the apple tree, where I hung upside down, like a bat. Oh yeah-and this big, fallen tree on the hill, the one with the soft, smooth bark, perfect for carving initials, and where, if you walked way out to the narrow end and bounced, it was almost like having your own trampoline.

I looked at my pitiful map and thought about how, when we gave directions to our house, we’d tell people we lived just before the big bump. Everyone knew the bump. Some kind of water problem caused the road to hoove up into a series of lumps that were absolutely perfect for riding a bike over. Hit ‘em just right-go airborne.

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