Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 17:23:10 -0500 From: Phanny Subject: [WRITERS] SUB: CONTEST: Twilight Twilight I remember trudging up Country Club Lane as a young girl, and snow lay all around - but that wasn’t the thing, and across Strawberry Lane and onto an extension that was just a country road that led down to a hundred-year-old flaking farmhouse and past the rabbit farm - oh, my mind becomes a right triangle at that place, by the hedge, by the rows of hutches (you know I can’t recall which boy told me about rabbit feet charms or which girl told me her sister had a rabbit fur coat, ooohhhhhh, but once Daddy gifted me with a rabbit of my own in a hutch under my bedroom window in the backyard, well, then I never went past the place again - my loyalties wouldn’t untwist enough for that) - but past the rabbit farm, on a young winter day of late afternoon with a gang of kids and my oldest brother, too, and I cannot recall other than just the gang, and my oldest brother was my tether, we checked each others' whereabouts with glances, he and I, and I am sure I never told him it was me checking on him (I always know so much more than he does outside of a book) and we all had ice skates, and I was thrilled. That was the thing. We were not headed for the river, where some kids went to skate - after the adults tested it, and my Dad even took the bulldozer down one time and declared it safe, or so I heard, and I remember how frightened I was when someone told me about that, and the picture that kept coming into my head accompanied by the biggest crack you ever heard, and then the tilting, and my Dad with this big look of realization on his face at the last moment, the too late moment - my oldest brother always went to the river, they used to rip up the ice playing hockey, yuck, and isn’t it strange that cars made me fast as my thoughts but ice skates made me and my thoughts into slow motion, but that isn’t the thing, though I never skated on the river in winter, not me. The thoughts of all that water underneath could do me in and I remember how just walking along that seeming slab of ice could crack ice bubbles like nutshells. This other place was made for me, that was the thing, and it turned out to be a marsh, where for one long fall it must have rained right up until it froze and all snowed for all, for the marsh was frozen solid, and I skated and skated and skated. I did twirl after twirl, I was a ballerina and an ice dancer and the brown twigs and trunks that rose up beside me were partners and audiences and court jesters, men and women of the court awaiting an audience with the queen, and you know how long that always takes, and I floated and twirled among them all happy and free, and there was lots of calling out to one another in the gang, and even the boys tried to twirl instead of just race, the twigs wouldn’t let them race, and no one fought, and for once, I didn’t cry out of cold on the way home, I didn’t go home crying and frozen and weak at all. I went home strong and warm, embraced for the first time by winter, a training wheel winter, and the sky was only a titch darker than when we arrived but the whole sunless after school time of day there in that marsh taught me about twilight, about the time of dreamy confidence, about possibilities, and now that I am this age I understand that before the night gathers there shadowless gray tones gather all around, just made for seeing, with bits of light and dark, like a lady with good taste, but even more a twilight reveals the clearest image of objects, of reality, the way on cloudy November mornings the sun really does hide for a while and you can pass school kids on their way and see right into their eyes and they can see right into yours, even if they’re slow poking along and even if you’re behind the wheel of your car.