Grass Between My Toes

Life beyond reach is prison without bars. Chains without keys.

I want you to know why I write about being inside the outside the way I do. As a stranger in a strange land.

I wasn't supposed to be in it.

Every step I take in it, every breath of it I take, every wave or ripple in a lake, every drop of rain, every sunrise, every sunset, every mountain, every tree, every blade of grass, is a gift.

To me.

To all of us.

I know this because I was once locked inside. A prison without bars. Chains without keys.

I grew up on a street with one tree. A new tree on a new block. Post-war homes for post-war families with soon to be post-war kids.

Dad's war ended in a corner house, the first end of war house on the block. Dad had the first post-war sidewalk, the first post-war driveway, the first post-war tree.

571 was the address, a black and white ranch home for a black and white family. A Ford in the driveway, a Philco in the living room, Hop-A-Long Cassidy linoleum in the baby's room. My room. I drooled over the western plains, crawled on the Rio Grande, slept on the Sierra's.

Grew up with horses, mountains, rivers, lakes, sunrise and sunset, and never left my room. Outside was my life inside. I was several years old before I realized the outdoors wasn't flat, cold, and scattered with cookie crumbs.

To this day I remember the first time my mother opened the kitchen door and I walked outside. It was a black door, the cement porch was painted green, to my left was a white trellis with red roses, on my right, the outside.

My mother held my left hand, my father held my right, and we inched me across the porch, tottered on the edge, took one step off, then a gentle lift guided by two hands that swung me out to the grass beyond the gravel carport.

And when I landed I'll never forget the feel of grass between my toes. And when I sat, the dirt I held in my hands. Nothing like my linoleum outside.

I sat there and watched white clouds cross the blue sky, saw the leaves in the trees move, listened to the birds sing. It was the day I started to believe in magic.

I was 4 years old.

I spent the first three years of my life in a prison of plaster. Turtle boy. A total body cast my shell. My jail. The floor was my world, I knew people by their ankles. Shoes.

Outside began where my windows ended. My parents used to joke that I was an easy kid to baby-sit, put me on the floor, come back a couple hours later, and I would still be there.

I was packaged pretty much head to toe. From under my arms to the balls of my feet I was 1952 State-of-the-Art Plaster. I could move my head, I could open my mouth, blink, move my arms, hold things (but not pick them up if those things fell). That was me, that was how I grew up thinking me was.

This was my normal.

No other part of me could move. I was head, arms, and hands. Nothing else. Except once every three months when my parents took me to the hospital and people in white smocks took a circular saw with a long black cord and cut me out. They would saw up one side of my body, walk around the table, then saw up the other side.

Once they unplugged the saws, two guys with masks showed up, each carrying a hammer and chisel. And a lady in a white hat. The lady had curly hair, red lipstick, some sort of pin things that kept her hat on, and she chewed gum.

The lady with gum would stand at the head of the table, behind my head, and then bend over so she was looking directly into my face. Then she would grab my shoulders and pin my arms down.

And the guys in the masks would place the chisels in the saw line, and start hammering away.

I was three years old and I just watched the lady in the white hat chew gum.

And then came freedom. For a few minutes.

They painted cold orange stuff all over my naked body and sent me back to the prison of plaster. One white swatch of dripping water and globs of plaster at a time.

Layer by layer they would wrap me up into another cast (much later my grandmother would tell me she always thought I was born gift wrapped), this time a slightly bigger cast, one I could grow into. And my parents would take me home and put me back down on the linoleum where I could see the Rio Grand, close up.

I will never forget the taste of linoleum.

I will never forget the sound of chisels and the smell of Wrigley gum.

I will never forget what it felt like to not be me.

To not be the child in the cast. To be free.

If only for a moment.

You only need to be confined inside to know that there is magic out there. Somewhere else.

A prison without bars. Chains without keys.

Go outside.

I don't care what you do in it, just be inside the outside. Stand in the wind, run in the surf, listen to the leaves.

Just ask a 4 year old kid meant to always be inside, life begins when the sun hits your face.

That's why the feel of grass between my toes, the smell of a lake breeze, the taste of rain on my face will always be magical to me.

And I hope, for you as well.

db