Childhood

Over the green rippling surface of Ohio I rode my bicycle. On my left came a barn, in front of it a plain black carriage sitting with reins resting slack and its attendant horse trotting about with its sisters and brothers in the field behind. At a spigot nearby was a woman in a plain black dress and bonnet, arched over, pumping water into a bucket, ignorant of me as I looked on. I'd entered the Amish country.

Next on the road, in the yard of a white house there sat two small girls beneath a tall old tree, both wearing the same dress and bonnets and little black shoes. They looked up suddenly to me from the grass and were first struck confused, but a broad smile spread across each bright face and they began vigorously waving with wide eyes fixed to me.

From behind the hill in front of me now their father came. He wore a black suit, a flat black hat, was bearded and projected a pleasant sensation, sitting in his carriage with the reins resting in his palms, a slim brown horse pulling him along. His face, too, showed a smile, and he chuckled when he saw me. The wonder his children had experienced in seeing me seemed in him to have been replaced predominantly with amusement, resulting from his benefit of experience.

Their wonder caused me to wonder, to attempt to see through their young eyes. They looked out from the boundary of their lawn onto a road traversed all day by vehicles they don't understand. Having never felt the vibrations of an engine from a passenger seat, having never seen images of the wide world flickering on a television screen or any of the other familiar and ubiquitous experiences the rest of America takes for granted. What must they think of it all?

As a child, I remember, my mother buckled me tightly into a safety seat in the rear of the car. I'd sat, bored and restless, while the mundane land passed by, occupying myself with my little fingers and hands until we pulled into the grocery store parking lot. She let my sister out, then placed her hands beneath my shoulders and lifted me out from the car, standing me on the asphalt. My sister tagged along beside her and I peered around from the shopping cart seat, keeping my fingers grasped around the thin metal bars. We wandered around the store, Mom picked out what we needed and placing it into the cart's basket. Inevitably my sister and I began losing our patience so Mom promised us each a 25 cent fruit roll up if we'd keep ourselves quiet. Back in the car I sat buckled again, now scratching at the edge of the gummy fruit circle and peeling it away from the plastic, poking out the animal shapes in its surface and chewing them one by one.

That memory flashed through my mind. Seemingly trivial, it was something these children couldn't know. They saw world as if separated from it by a pane of glass, but I could see in their eyes there was no loss of childhood. They held the same curiosity and pure amazement now as I'd had years ago. As children looking onto something new a waterfall of intrigue and bewilderment filled them up without them knowing what the difference was between intrigue and bewilderment, nor knowing the other words to comprehend their feelings. I looked now back at them through the eyes of my past to see inside them. There was understanding in the instant our gazes met. I was filled from the same waterfall of feelings and, though I tried, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed, and an simple smile burst onto my own face.

This road I'd taken led me through a line of Amish towns. Mennonites were intermixed, dressing similarly but with distinctly more colorful clothing. Outside every house were hung long lines of clothes drying in the day breeze, dresses and shirts running from little to big, one end to the other. Varieties of bicycles laid on the lawns or rested against a house or barn, and two or three stood outside each workplace and shop. The children were mostly out, the bigger ones working in the yards, littler ones playing.

As I slowly pedaled up one steep hill, a small boy in overalls sitting on a white swaying porch bench peered out at me with wide eyes and gaping mouth from underneath the brim of a straw hat. He sat intensely paralyzed, his stare glued like a magnet to my bicycle.

Every adult waved to me as I passed by, almost all with the same expression of amusement. But eventually I had passed the bounds of their humble land and was put back in modernity and to, what was to me, the repetition of the familiar.

Being so near to my next checkpoint, Justin's grandparents' house, I decided to push through the day and get to Canal Fulton. You may recall, on the night Justin had hurt his leg, we'd both spent the following day and night beside a stream in the forest just off the road. At the time neither of us had considered to look for, or had even known the looks of, poison ivy. Much too late, we both figured out we'd come in contact with it, and in my ignorance until that point I had been scratching wherever I itched. I'd had it for maybe a week now and it continued to spread. I passed the long hours of each night tormented by the intense itch, laying there in my sleeping bag with arms crossed in restraint, mustering all the force of will I could to keep myself from scratching.

What I wanted now more than anything else was a shower and I would ride a hundred miles to have one if that's what it took. So that's exactly what I did. It required nearly the full day, but once the sun had just barely dropped below the treeline I was stopped on a sidewalk corner by the green sign displaying “Canal Fulton Corporation Limit”.

Finding the way between towns is simple if given a map, but the mazes of neighborhoods and townships are a matter completely their own. I called Justin to get more detailed directions to the house. After a little more riding and a few more calls I had found their street. From a distance I saw Justin's silhouette, arms extended, waving me down. I waved back at him and coasted to a stop in the driveway of his grandparents' white house.

Once Justin's parents had picked him up on that cold and bitter day in Crossville, TN, he'd ridden back to home with them in Greenville, SC. In the days that followed he visited the doctor and was subjected to some exams, with the resulting report that his knee should recuperate on its own given adequate rest. With a knee brace on his leg he was sent on his relieved way.

Given this news he had devised a way to reconvene with me and continue the trip. While I was riding through Kentucky he was packing and shipping his bicycle, bags, and belongings to his grandparents and then he paid a bus fare to get himself there as well. He would need a bit more time to recuperate, but I greatly anticipated a break and an opportunity to rid myself of the ivy rash.

I pulled my bicycle into their garage. A group of people, most of them Justin's mother-side extended family, sat in chairs on the back porch talking, the nearest few giving me a wave and friendly comment.

Inside the house I met Justin's grandmother.

“We thought you'd look like some kind of monster, the way Justin made it sound with the poison ivy and all. It's not so bad is it?" She laughed. Their white dog waddled up and began to sniff my ankles, "And that's Mindy. She won't bite or anything. She's a nice dog."

Immediately Justin took me down the basement stairs, pulled a towel out of a cabinet in the bathroom and pointed out the knobs, nozzles, soaps and shampoos of the shower. Finally I set to cleaning off. If that shower had continued for the rest of my life I'd have died happy. But, of course, not wanting to be rude I kept the shower short and went upstairs to formally meet everyone. On the porch I was introduced to the slew of family members who I'd become further acquainted with over the next eight days.

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