A pool of morning sun 00:05:15
In the first home where I lived, I slept with my two brothers at the top the stairs. In the summer, I slept in a pair of white briefs and spent the summer barefoot. I took a particular pleasure when I woke up each morning of putting on a pair of shorts – little boy shorts, not Bermuda shorts – and stealing out of the house to follow a ritual I had come to love.
Our house was white clabbord and on the front was a cement stairway which was a dull blue-grey. The house faced south, and early in the morning the rising sun would create a pool of buttery yellow on the stairs that was as alluring to me as a seductive magical pool.
Naked save for my little boy shorts, I would enter that magical pool of sunlight and sit in the chilly air – for it was early morning. Not really sit. I would huddle with my arms around me. Sound? I remember no sound, but no doubt there were the early morning sounds of birds and traffic on the streets. But I was not focused on sound. I was totally a feeling creature. Feeling the air. Feeling the sun. Feeling the light.And slowly, slowly, slowly, faint warmth would begin to creep over my skin. I would be shivering at first, and the chill would gradually, deliciously give way to a tender, gentle, comforting and private – for this was for me alone – feeling of well-being and joyous pleasure. And it was mine.
No one else knew. No one else ever knew. The world around me was the regular world of my home and yard, the street and neighboring houses. But I was there, alone, compact, wrapped in my own arms, in the pool of sunlight.
What was really close was the heat and the cement stair and the sense of safety that this was my home but it was also my secret place, unsuspected by brothers, sisters, parents…anyone. Mine.
And I would sit motionless, still and warm, until the sun moved on.
Why is this memory so cherished by me? Why do I return to it in my mind? Why is it so comforting?
It was the first independent act – and more important, the first consciously secret thing – I ever did. It was mine.
This was a sunny summer joy. It could not be had when the weather war rainy or even overcast. In the other seasons, I could not be outside in only a pair of shorts.
When my pool-sit would end, I would then go in to breakfast where there was another sunny joy – yellow wallpaper with bunches of red cherries on stems. The pleasure of that was second to sitting in the sunny pool because it wasn’t as private and could not be savored so intimately.
As I would sit in the pool of sun, my body would calibrate with infinitesimal increments the warmth that I felt. I would imagine the huge yellow sun so many millions of miles away, and yet it was warming me on my concrete steps with the godlike gift of being gigantic and beyond imagining, and yet personal and directly touching me.
Emotion? I felt joy and independence and a complete harmony in my skin, a skinny boy of 4 or 5 or 6 who had, somehow, been touched by the sun in this subtle and private way. The tiny increases in temperature of the air, of the concrete, of my skin were as elusive as counting the rising temperature in a tub of water that was gradually being heated by hotter water. They were discernible, but miniscule.
What I dreaded was the call of a voice from inside the house, a voice that would be seeking me, calling me to breakfast, searching for the missing one. I wanted to ignore that voice, but it was inevitable that – if it came – my reverie would end and I would need to go inside.
What would I look like if someone were watching me in a hovering drone? I would be a small huddled boy, naked save for a pair of skimpy shorts, with his skinny arms wrapped around his chest and his legs together, shivering and then slowly opening and basking in the sun.
And no one knew. No one ever knew, really. I have told a few people about this over time, but no one has ever seemed to get it. I think they think that it isn’t interesting what a little boy did early on summer mornings, or they simply can’t go there.
Summer morning. The smell of grass and fresh, cool air and sunshine to come and the anticipation of a barefoot day.