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Show On long afternoons, we would jump from the bridges over the Tricounty canal, racing the water moccasins to the shore or lazily floating down the river on top of rubber tubes purchased from the gas station. The water was muddy from the Nebraska soil and thick with sludge. We wore tennis shoes in case we landed on a submerged car or refrigerator or a ball of barbed wire tossed into the canal by a local farmer. Water that ran in ditches was a novelty for me but my cousins had grown up swimming such chutes. They took the lead in our play, and I allowed it. At times, the bridges felt too high, the water too murky, and I was just as happy to cheer them to the muddy shore from the safety of the road. Other times we played Barbies in the spare room, opening the Barbie airplane that my aunt Donna had played with when she was a girl, bending the dolls' legs so they could sit at the tiny table or strapping them into the seat reserved for the flight attendant. Two blonde men piloted the Barbie plane, their figures painted onto the plastic. One had blue eyes and looked at us, a hand raised in a wave, the moment, perhaps, before he winked. The closet in the spare room was full of toys that Donna had once played with. The only girl in a family of four boys, she was understandably spoiled. By the time she arrived in the early fifties, my grandpa had left farming and was doing well in real estate and business. Poverty no longer marked their lives. When my father was in college, he would bring presents home to his ten-year-old sister, and she would sit at the window watching for his car, waiting to see his long body unfold like a map from the driver's seat. Donna was a loved little girl; her Barbie collection cascaded from the closet when 92 |
