The Tomboy
By
A. Desiree Midkiff....

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My father, in his younger days, was a lively artist. His hands created paintings, gardens, and had even been the author of many sermons. But my father’s greatest creation, his other child, was the house I lived in when I was very young. The first house he built was on a couple acres of land in Royal, Arkansas. It had burned down because of a faulty chimney, but soon after my family had sifted through the dust to salvage anything they could, the plans for the new house began.....

It was a magnificent start; the foundation, sturdy and strong, would be the shoulders upon which my father’s grand idea would be carried. But being a man of thought and not action proved his motivation would run in short supply. This dwelling, this child, would not reach adulthood before our eyes. A 2,200 square foot ranch house with four bedrooms, an office, two bathrooms, an iron wood stove, hardwood floors, wrap-around porch and beautifully adorned, hand-crafted trim had left my weary father uneasy, wishing for the vigor to finish it. ....

Our yard was littered, not with trash, but with the things we needed and did in fact want: badly stored lawn mowers, bed springs that we could someday need for something, five gallon buckets used to catch the rainwater that my mother and I would wash our hair with; water straight from Heaven itself. There were chicken coops with toe-nailed boards and a barn used for storing pottery collected over the years by my parents on their many travels. ....

The outside paint was chipped and the plumbing was never completely installed.  But there was an outhouse at the back of the yard, close to a large murky pond. It never had any fish in it and the water was always too stagnant to swim in. Its tangled weeds, thick and stubborn, had claimed the lives of many a wayward chicken, pulling them down into the blackness with every struggle they made to get free. Behind the water’s Western edge, through a mess of muscadine vines and briars, was my hide out.  This was where I would lose hours of my time, pretending, digging, climbing, and adding my collection of bites and scrapes. ....

Our house and this land were a tomboy, much like me, at the time. She was as reckless as I was and her pretty knees were adorned with scars, each holding a memory. The pockets of her over-alls, full of trinkets jingling around, gave her charm. She was an awkward girl, desperately trying to emulate everything about her father, the one who had built the most notable parts of her. The young girl didn’t care about her makeup or wild hair, and she gave not thought at all about how she compared to the other “prettier” girls in the neighborhood. This girl was loved; we were her parents and we adored everything that could be misunderstood about her- because she was OURS.....

But the time came for my family and I to move on and let this little girl grow up. Moving into town proved difficult and I found myself missing her. The friend I had grown up with, whose fields I rolled in, whose tall trees beckoned me each summer to climb even higher than I had the summer before, was gone. My otherwise solitary childhood had been filled with her land’s natural mysteries and the curious beauties of an unfinished home. Years fall behind me and the smells of that place grow fainter, colors become grey, sounds are muffled and to try to recreate my explosive excitement I once felt while running around that pond, is near to impossible. ....

So I resolved to revisit my long-lost companion last summer, while on a drive across the state. Pulling down the once dirt road, which was now paved, made my heart and everything within me thunder. I anticipated meeting her and maybe becoming old friends again, since I still felt like a twelve year old in my spirit. Maybe she would still be stunted in her age. The neighborhood didn’t seem as large as it once was. The drive, not so long as it once had been, left me asking as Peggy Lee might say, “Is that all there is?” I reached the top of that hill where my father’s house had sat for years, and with my heart’s arms open, my mind replaying the games we had made up- she finally came into view. But my house was unfamiliar. ....

Luckily, the woman who loved there was a woman of good taste and a polite demeanor. She let me in and I told her the story of how I came to be so acquainted with the place. Sitting and chatting about improvements made and changes done, she allowed me to spend some time alone, reminiscing over the old house. Quietly, and with much respect, I entered each space to see what the place had become. ....

One of the bedrooms, the one whose ceiling had no tiles, but insulation, was now an office. Books lined the walls on one side and shelves with very important things lined the other. This room that once held my toys for so long was now a place of business. It did not have time for such follies! Plumbing had since been installed and the toilets were now in complete working order. New molding, high on the ceiling was worn like expensive earrings that one would only wear on special occasions. ....

The chicken coops were bulldozed over and a new metal, modern swing set was in its place. My mother’s rose garden was replaced with a lawn. Solid, green, uniform grass took the place of her variegated roses, her tea roses, her climbing roses. The reds and pinks, oranges and yellows, lavenders and blues- they were all gone. The pond out back had been filled in with dirt and since grew its own field. My hideout beneath the brush of that bank was cleared away and left bare.....

This tore at me because my tomboy pal had cast aside her childish ways; sweetness and innocence were gone. Sobriety there stood. Standing in the middle of that new field, I wept. I wept for the loss of her. The girl I once knew with her quirks and silliness had become a product of a charm school made of paint and pipes, tile and carpeting, bulldozers and lawn mowers. She’d become the valedictorian of Miss Manners’ graduating class, and my tomboy was, as I too had become, a woman. I appreciated her, not for her humor, but for her grace. My father’s little girls were all grown up.....