Congenial-speak #3

       Musing on the subtext of my political memoir Ten Years and Change: A DFL Boyhood in Minnesota I meandered my mind to discover the following story in its own right:       

       I slip in my bed expecting to dream, like a punchy child into starch-white sheets, and sleep until I am wakened by bird calls from the leaves of font lawn maples. I aspired on the sultry summer nights of my youth, the lilac scented breeze finding its niche in my window shade. It is the screen that has often been the background for the silhouette of my sister's giant sunflower. It is the window though which I peered with my toy plastic periscope. It is the escape hatch I eased myself through to elude punitive babysitters. It is the bed in which I lay ensconced in a fuzzy tan blanket with a thin white stripe, a hypnotic talisman that hinted at the succinct divide of the blanket, of security, of childhood, of the war-torn country existed somewhere beyond my door on Aldrich Avenue.

        My panda bear has his white pen-marked rubber nose tweaked. His shaking tiddly-winked eyes set the meter of the day. The toy box with the crayon scrawled map of the U.S. on the side receives a kick as I leave the room. Hardwood hall floor light dims, and my parents' room is closed. I must be quiet. I am the first one awake and hear the springs cringe on the trundle bed my sister occupies. She moves slightly, and I look back, wondering if she is going to rise a join me for breakfast. She does not. I have free reign of the house for a few hours, maybe, on the first day of summer vacation. It is Saturday, June 20, 1970. I am 5 years, 4 months and 19 days old. I am a dubiously honored graduate of the Betty's Nursery School.