A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media: First Person

Heritage of an American Dreamer
By Katherine Schweitzer
Email: kscarney at valkyrie dot net
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March 13, 2008

My house was white with a stone front facing the road. A bungalow. Upstairs was the place I shared with my younger sister. Its walls began curving about three-feet from the ground and arced themselves into the ceiling. There was a half bath up there, in addition to a dresser and large closet for our clothes. We each had a twin bed; a place to sleep.

The driveway curved around the house and spread from single to double wide on its backside. A large maple tree stopped the drive from going any further by standing at the end of the wider section which was used as a turn-around.

We had a two car garage, but only one car. The garage was white with a slanted roof and had a separate door for each bay. The car was always parked on the right side. Bicycles, the lawn mower, flower pots and other standard garage junk held residence on the left. The drive separated the garage from house. "Detached" is how a realtor might describe it.

Directions to my childhood home are easy from here. Start at the house. Cross the driveway and make a left turn around the garage and past the flower gardens lining its side. Diagonal from its corner is where I lived. A person with an untrained eye might have mistaken my home for an apple tree, or more specifically, a Yellow Delicious apple tree. I can't really fault anyone for their ignorance in this capacity since, before now, no one has ever entered its doors besides me.

First, put your right foot in the crook and reach around the branches on either side to hoist yourself up. By twisting to the left a tad, you can lay back and recline quite nicely on the branch just used for leverage. Sun filters through the leaves above, sometimes in rays of dust. And when wind stirs them, it is possible to see fluttering fairy wings. There have always been tons of them living up there.

If you choose not to recline and watch fairies on that first step, you can put your left foot on the arched branch recliner, grab the branch above it, twist and sit back. It's a perfect-made bench Mother Nature made out of an upward growing branch turned horizontal like an elbow. This was the main living quarters. The heart of my home. Towards the outer part of the bench in my living quarters, the branch split itself off into two lesser branches, one a wee bit higher than the other. A can of pop fit nicely when set on the lower one with its back resting on the higher. Bring a book and the magic tree will take you places.

From all angles, I could watch the tree perform its magic. It started out with buds, then blossoms, then little nubs of fruit that grew larger every day. In their green phase, the apples would begin to taste good. Sour. And if I ate too many, I'd often end up trekking back to the house with a belly ache.

The transformation of apples from green to yellow had to be tasted in order to understand the magic of the tree. By the time the fruit made it to golden, they were filled with juice as sweet as candy that would drip through my lips and trickle from my chin. When the apples were yellow, Mrs. Larsen would show up at my window with a bushel basket. We'd talk while filling it with magic yellow goodness. Later, she'd bring back a pie. A city bustled outside my windows.

The garden alongside the garage was magic, too. Purple crocuses sprouted while icy crystal remnants of snow fought the inevitable spring melt. Then came daffodils, tulips and grape hyacinths. Then peonies—"Bowl of Beauty" they were called my grandmother's favorite. Then shasta daisies, purple coneflowers, and black-eyed-susans. Then mums whose buds we began pinching off in July in order to save their blooms for autumn.

Several larger stones lined the back of the garage. Headstones. Two marked the graves of my rabbits. Lucy was a New Zealand White, and April was a California Gray. Another marked the shared grave of my goldfish. I had won the pair at a church carnival, but my cat pulled them from their bowl one day while I was gone. I found a dead squirrel once, and buried him beneath one of my hand-painted tombstones, too. It seemed the right thing to do. Dead birds I found were given popsicle stick crosses as their markers.

The maple tree at the driveway's end sometimes rained seed-pod propellers doing their whirlybird thing. The driveway would become littered with them. Any car parked in the turnaround wound up blanketed with them, as well. If a good wind caught hold of raining propellers, a few would end up sticking to the blankets Mrs. Larsen had hanging on the clothes line and collect themselves in her clothespin bag.

Squirrels never visited me. Perhaps they knew this tree was my home and respected me as kind of being like them. But they would dance and leap between our driveway maple and Mrs. Larsen's maple doing whatever it is that squirrels do. For the most part, the same held true for birds. I think with them, though, they liked the driveway maple better because that's where my mother hung her bird feeders.

I traveled with Ralph, a mouse on a motorcycle. It was my first time on a bike and it felt good. Young Laura Ingalls took me through time on all of her prairie journeys. Poetry sang to me. National Geographic took me to places where lions lived and black women ran around with no shirts and plates in their lips. I sailed on pirate ships, sped in boats and flew in airplanes. I became friends with cats and dogs who could talk. I expanded my word power through Reader's Digest and was a key player in every story of tragedy and heroism from cover to cover. I fell in love and journeyed through puberty long before my mind or body actually figured out what either was These just were normal things a person normally experienced at home while growing up in a Yellow Delicious magic tree, I guessed.

Some people thought I should spend more time in the house with my family. "It isn't good to be such a loner," they'd say. Others expressed concern over my lack of socializing and engaging with other people. "It's not healthy for a girl your age to be alone all the time," they'd say. Other kids in the area ran around in gangs, rode bikes, played tag, or whatever it is that those other kids did and I'd be told, "You really need to go play with them." I didn't want to. Some people, Others and They didn't understand, but I couldn't fault them for this. If a person doesn't realize the difference between a home and an apple tree, how could they possibly see I wasn't a loner?

Inside my current glider swing home; the one I have tucked beneath my silver-leaf maple out back, I watch gardens on the back and side of my house. Tall grasses, wild roses and weeds grow on the other side of the fence. The birds love this. They love perching on my clothesline while waiting for an opening at a feeder. There?s a big fat groundhog who waddles through sometimes. His path can be seen in the tramped down grasses. Crickets sing, hummingbirds squeak, and in the lone tree standing in the midst of a cornfield, a red tail hawk waits. I recline and I rock myself and I think about those people who don't know the difference the ones who can't see. Those same ones who wanted me to engage in the world because they engaged in the world. Most people do, I suppose. Fairy wings flutter above me and I know I'd much rather engage with the world rather than in it. It's my heritage.

About the author:
I'm a single mother of four children ranging in age from 5 to 24. (Yes, those numbers are right. The 5 year-old was a bonus). AND, I'm also an American Dreamer with high aspirations for herself. As if 4 children haven't given me enough work, I'm a part-time shift manager for a restaurant, and I'm a senior at the University of Akron with my sights on an MFA program for creative writing after that. Welp—I think that about sums up the essence of this writer unless you want me to add some stories about my cats...