Myrtle and Me

When I think of myrtle, I don’t quite know if it’s the flower on the vine, the old-fashioned name (the only Myrtles I ever met were characters in old books), my mother, or the playground.

I think I’ll start with the playground, and maybe the other parts of the memory will fall in place. Or maybe they won’t.

Because this story is all, maybe life is all, about place, and knowing how things fit into it.

So the playground:

It was actually not its own space, but rather was what could be seen as an offshoot of the playground area used by most of the students in my elementary school, kindergarten through sixth grade back then. (I never have understood or liked the concept of middle school.) This was the school I entered at age four, never looking back. Never. Even now, I am not looking back. I am simply going through the space, gathering things up to take with me when I leave. Maybe I’ve forgotten something, maybe not. 

Maybe I won’t be able to carry it all, or don’t need it, but doubt either of these things will happen.

I might have spent some time with another girl on the little playground, but don’t know who that could have been. Because it took me a long time to figure out what friends were, I don’t recall having any friends in grade school, even though I remember a lot of the names of people in my class and the streets where they lived. They just weren’t friends, despite sending me valentines (some I still have) and my recollection of exactly which seats they had in school. There four groups of us, and my group is the one I remember, even to which ones worked on social studies projects with me, who was smart and who was considered to be less so.

I think it was junior high before the concept and reality of friends entered my life. (Junior high was seventh and eighth grade and no longer exists, so I’ve heard. Our junior high was a big wing attached to the high school, so I only attended two schools before going off to college. Life in a small town should always be like that: made up of places you can trust on being there every day, even if you go away for years. 

Those places allow you to travel without having to worry if they’ll be there when you return.

Still, there’s a shadow and a voice somewhere of another girl in a swing. Sometimes.

There is also an almost embarrassing memory of the corner of a building which, not that I think about it, was the school gym. It was made of brick and stuck out behind the original rectangle of the school. The other girl and I would sidle up to that anonymous corner, ignored or unseen by the rest of the world, and swear. We felt so grown up, so mature, when we spat out those four-letter words onto the wall, in secret. Don’t ask me what the words were. The truth be told, we didn’t have much of a repertoire. There may have been only a trio of dirty words we’d snatched from conversations (not from television or our families). We didn’t hear them often and nobody swore in my house. Seriously.

So there they went. A few bad words I can’t even repeat because I’ve forgotten them and still rarely swear, even years later. Only on special occasions, like when I break a nice dish or a cat does something inappropriate. Perhaps the few I had back then landed on that brick corner and stuck, or splattered. 

Those words weren’t really part of the playground, though. The important parts were the swings, the myrtle, and a few other things I’ll get to in a minute.

So the swings:

Memory says there were two in the little, forgotten part, but there could have been three, or only one. They were especially large or sturdy (like the ones in the park, uptown, near the Spanish Civil War cannons). The maternal advice I’d gotten and which had been well-given, had been not to get too reckless. Meaning: don’t swing too high. Since I didn’t (and still don’t) like heights, it had been easy advice to follow. Mostly I swung in gentle arcs while looking at the back wall of the gymnasium with its bricks.

The ground was probably dry and dusty, especially during the summer. There were a few bits of gravel, but no flowers, not even ones trampled by young feet. It was a quiet, homely, empty space, worthy of its oblivion. However, behind the swing, or swings, there was what could have been a chain-link fence. On the other side of the fence, beyond the school property, were things that mattered, that are the other reasons why the dusty, ugly playground still matters.

Out from under the metal links of the unattractive fence grew curious myrtle vines, unaware of the lack of water in the swing area, and happily shaded. I later learned it is a plant with great capacity for survival. I have also learned it is called vinca and periwinkle. One name means it binds to the ground, which has to be part of my fondness for the plant, why I feel attached to it. The other name means joy of the ground, and needs no further explanation. (Yes, blue is my happy color and everybody knows that about me.)

The fact is, by spending time in a silent, infertile playground, I fell in love with myrtle-vinca-periwinkle, and since grade school every place I’ve ever lived and could plant a garden in, I’ve had myrtle growing. Partly it’s because of the plant’s unselfish persistence, its stamina, its shiny leaves that usually remain oblivious to insects. It’s also the simple blue flowers that never apologize for their simplicity and simply continue to grow.

Because blue is my favorite color now, imagine that’s also my mother’s influence. She’s the one who told me the names of the flower. I’ve seen it in nurseries as vinca vine, but I know it’s not the only name, nor the prettiest of the three.

So the playground:

I would swing and swing, freed from the nasty words I’d slung at the ugly bricks. Meanwhile, the myrtles were at my back, edging toward me, showing me their pretty leaves. This may all seem quite dull now and hardly material to write about, but the playground was also the beginning of the end of childhood. Sixth grade meant the end of seven years in the ugly old building, and swinging by myself for the most part. On that playground, in its loneliest part, in the summer or on weekends when there were no classes. Nothing more, for the most part.

Until the fire station that was off to the right began clanging and shattered that beautiful solitude. Not a frequent event, but it was impossible on those occasions to keep swinging, knowing that somebody’s house might be burning down. Somebody we knew because in my little town everybody knew everybody else. They really did. We did.

When the clanging stopped, it was time to leave the playground. Between the corner of the brick fire station (where we never went to swear) and the end of the chain-link fence, there was a slender opening. The opening was the escape from the swing area and had a path few knew about, lined with more shy little myrtles, who love pines with their acid needles and shade.

The concentration of flying (prudently) in a swing broken by the fire alarm, we (well, most likely I) sought that path not often traveled. It led toward Cuyler Street (away from Canandaigua Street where the school was, but parallel to it). And it led to the town library whose front lawn displayed, not pines but the biggest ginkgo tree in the world. That tree surely must hold the record for ginkgo width and height and yellowness in the fall. It might be the reason I also like the color yellow, although I like it best when the lemony shade is set against the sky.

Myrtle and ginkgo must be why I named my studio Sun and Indigo many years later. Maybe that tree is the reason I planted two of them in my backyard while hoping they would never come to compete with the original. (No worry: I won’t live that long.) My point is that old memories, when they are perfect, should never be diminished by new ones.

The most important thing about this story, however, is that ugly little playground, lonely and dusty, and its link to the path. Not the chain-link fence, the link that was the opening between the fence (also ugly) and the fire station’s back corner (where no bad words were ever spoken). The path mattered, and matters, so much because it and the periwinkle-vinca-myrtles (call them any name you like) led me to treasure. Surely you’re not thinking this is a reference to the golden glow of an autumn ginkgo, despite its massive size and beauty.

For me, the source of wealth was obviously in the library (it will surprise no one to hear that it too was made of red brick) that was aptly name The King’s Daughters Library. The libraries, in all honesty, might not have been princesses. In fact, they were more than a little homely and cranky. 

Nobody ever saw them smile, even though they worked in the best place in town. Nevertheless, they held the keys to the kingdom in their hands if not in their dour expressions and salt-and-pepper hair. They were the persons who knew me like everybody knew everybody else in town. What was more, using their determined pencils and probably arthritic fingers, they would write my name on the library cards for checking out books. The keys to the kingdom.

Nobody saw them smile as they deftly placed the ink stamp on the paper that indicated the day we had to return the treasure. Still and all, that stamp was the concession of knighthood. (What do you call a female knight?)

Once awarded the treasures of the kingdom by the daughters of the (anonymous) king, I would forget the scary swings that could fly to dangerous heights if I weren’t careful. I would head home, life full. 

Home was also made of brick, quite tall and quite old, that once upon a time, by a previous owner, had been painted yellow. Its heart was still red, nevertheless, and matched other, well-known, walls. I could live with that, and did, for many years.

Myrtle, of course, is still with me.