The between time

What could possibly go wrong? 

At the play ground in Palmdale, late 1950's

I have been thinking about the word “home” a lot this week. We never called where we lived home. It was “the house.” We might say “I’m going home.” to someone else. To each other it was “I’ll see you back at the house.” I still tend to talk about “the house.” It is just a place. This story is about the second place I ever lived.

We don’t live in the only house I have ever lived in. It has been even sold. We don’t live in Topanga. It isn’t ours yet. We live in an apartment, waiting. Will it be 6 weeks, 3 months. This is the between time. 

The apartments are in rows, with sidewalks in between. There are steps up to the front door. The rooms are small. The bedroom I share with my brother is just big enough for our bunk beds and a chest of drawers. Our beds were separate before, but now Sam is over me. When he climbs up and down, when he wiggles and teases, it is hard to sleep. 

It is always dark in The Apartment. The wood floors are dark brown. The heavy curtains are always closed. The small TV is always on, usually wrestling shows.  

Outside neighborhood kids swarm. I go out with my doll and her new, blue baby carriage with the hood that really folds down. A bigger boy has a small knife. He stabs holes in the hood of my carriage. “Why didn’t you stop him?!”  How can I stop such a big boy with a knife? How is it my fault? Does he get in trouble? I don’t play with my carriage anymore. It makes me feel sad and mad at the same time. 

Someone’s grandma sits on the steps in the late afternoon. She calls out to her grandkids “It’s getting jelly out here, go put your sweaters on.”

I look for purple stickiness flowing in with the fog. No, just regular fog. I ask my mommy and she laughs. I don’t know if I like this word between cold and hot. Chilly sounds made up to me. 

The between time is after I’m 4 and before I am 4 ½. At the end of it, we begin to spend time at the strange house in Topanga. It is our house now, but there are some things to do before we can move in.  There are things with water. There is putting plastic around part of the screen porch, to put the bunk bed. There is turning things on and making sure they work. 

Early in 1960, we leave The Apartment behind. We stay near the fireplace in the evening and put extra blankets on our beds. Now begins a new time; it is the time of rebuilding. It is a jumbled time of adventure and wonder.

Of course, at that time I didn’t understand so much of what was happening. We had to sell one house to buy another, and that takes time. Suddenly being in an apartment complex with a lot of strange kids was scary and exciting. It would be inconceivable today to push a 4 year old out the door and say “Go play.” I must have had some supervision or limits, but I clearly remember being on the sidewalk next to a busy street. 

Mostly, thinking back, I wonder what gave my parents the courage to do this. Selling one house to buy and remodel a rustic house on a hillside was a huge gamble. They could have lost everything. Did we all come out ahead in the end? Well, we survived and I have stories to tell. I’ll leave the final accounting to someone else.