As a young professor, when I first taught studio art, one of the printmaking portfolios I assigned was titled “Earliest Childhood Memory.” Students chose moms, dads, siblings, birthday cakes, teddy bears, tricycles, and family camping trips as subjects. There was a fire and a tornado. Takane, a student from Kyoto, Japan, created a delightful recollection in linocut relief in which her hand grasped a pair of chopsticks which in turn clutched a fish, her lunch, just before her cat snatched it from her.
My earliest memory remains vivid and frightening. When Mom and Dad were starting out and Dad drove a delivery truck for City Cleaners, they rented a sad, tiny cottage just down the highway from Gambier, Ohio. I don’t remember the interior of the house, but I was later told that the base of the home was rotted, which allowed unannounced visits from various small creatures. Grandpa and Grandma toiled over a ramshackle farm just a few miles away and though Grandma worked in the kitchen at Peirce Hall for many years cooking for privileged east coast students, we were all an ocean away from the social machinery of Kenyon College. I was two. My face and belly were sticky with something sweet. There were several neighbor kids who lived in the red house with the flat roof next door. All were older than me, between five and nine, and they were shouting, chasing me around the yard. Barefoot and dressed only in my underwear, I ran and laughed blissfully with a kitchen knife in my hand through the grass, slippery with dew. Mom was nowhere around.
For a short while after college, I was a caseworker for the county Child Protective Services. One beautiful spring day (I thought, how could I discover anything heartbreaking on a day like this?) the office responded to a call from an aunt, and I was sent to check on the welfare of her nephew. My little hatchback barely negotiated the mud of a deeply rutted driveway. Towering thistle and a wide variety of other unchecked weeds dominated the place and there was little distinction between yard and barnyard. Sharp, rusted farm implements like steel obstacles from the beaches of Normandy lay about ready for use but likely hadn’t been operated for some time. A trailer, their home, sat listing somewhat, orange rust stains ringed the roof and green mold painted the remainder. Tires, lumber, and other unidentifiable items were stuffed beneath the home and hundreds of beer and soda cans, more than I’ve seen in one place except a recycling center, accumulated beneath a rickety dry-rotted porch.
The mom and dad sat at their kitchen table smoking and drinking coffee when I entered. They were polite folks and seemed equally unsurprised and unconcerned with my arrival. The walls of the kitchen were greasy from fried food spatter and yellow from cigarette smoke. Enormous black flies buzzed lazily about several encrusted fly strips, curled dangling from the ceiling. I provided my usual caseworker bit and asked if I might look around. The dad said nothing and though the mom offered me a cup of coffee and consented, she made no effort to guide a tour. The hallway to the remainder of the trailer was filled the entire length two feet deep in clothes. I was obliged to walk unsteadily upon their wardrobe and duck in places. When I opened the bathroom door, I was astonished to discover that the back wall of the shower wasn’t there. The room was completely open to the elements and provided an unobstructed view of the barn and distant pastures.
Outside, I found the boy, about four or five, running about the yard in his underwear. Here was a familiar image. He could have been an impish cupid or a little buddha. He was barefoot and his legs were smeared with mud. And he was happy. Exceptionally happy. He offered that type of smile in children where you are sure he would burst out laughing at any moment and for any small reason. It was a smile that said he was loved. Thirty-five years later, I wonder what memories this boy reminisces from his childhood.
David Sapp, writer and artist, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawings titled Drawing Nirvana.