Winter Cherries, Sour and Sweet

Childhood memories lead me home

I was getting anxious. Not full blown anxious – that wouldn’t happen until I was an adult, and then always when someone walks ahead of me. My mother must have left me somewhere when I was very young because anytime a companion walks in front of me without waiting to see if I’m coming, I instinctively start shouting, “Wait! Wait for me!” I’ve never discussed this with a therapist, but it sounds like a childhood trauma to me.

This wasn’t one of those times. This time I was with my brother, my big brother, a full four years older than me. He would be graduating that year while I was still only in fourth grade. 

We had ventured downtown to pick up drumsticks. Not the kind you eat – the kind for playing drums. My brother was a drummer. He also played the trumpet but only because our mom wanted him to perform in church. I mean, really, there aren’t many occasions to play drums in church, at least not back then, even when hippie folk services were in fashion. Until recently, my mother played the organ up in the balcony and my father preached from the pulpit. And on holidays like Easter and Christmas, or any other Sunday my father could think of to make into a big event, my brother was expected to blow the horn during processionals and celebratory hymns. I was young enough to only sing – usually a solo (since our church didn’t have a choir) or a duet with my mom. On holidays my sister was off the hook. She had already put in her time playing guitar for those other folk services we had every few months.

So my brother and I had gone downtown to get his drumsticks. It wasn’t exactly out of the way since we had to pass through downtown to get to the north side. Still, the commute was long. Public transportation in Chicago moved slowly. Going from the south side (where our father lived) to the north side (where our mom now lived) included two buses and a subway train, and typically took about two hours. On a day like this one when the snow was thick on the sidewalks and several feet high at the curb and the wind chill was down around zero, two hours would be a blessing. Buses just run slower in that kind of weather.

Still, there we were, me and my brother, just kids, in the middle of winter, in downtown Chicago, walking under the L tracks, making our way through the blind swarm of adults leaving their jobs, trying to get to the subway station. Night was falling quickly, and I was becoming anxious. I was nine years old, I was tired, and I was cold. The exhilaration of this little adventure had faded, and my precocious veneer of confidence was wearing thin. I wanted to be home. Any home – my mom’s home or my father’s home – it didn’t matter, just home. It suddenly didn’t seem fair that our parents were divorcing, and I was out there in the cold trying to get from one place to the other. My eyes began to sting and my nose started running. Then my brother pulled on my arm and turned into a store. The metal bell clanked against the glass door and had long faded before I realized where we were. A candy store. An honest to goodness candy store. All candy, only candy, candy, candy, everywhere. Loose candy under the glass counter, packaged candy on the shelves, candy in tubes hanging above us. A candy store! I didn’t know these places existed! But wait, what were we doing here?

My brother looked through the glass counter and then up at the saleswoman. “A bag of sour cherries please,” he said. She nodded her head and scooped the round red balls into a small white paper sack and handed them to my brother – my big brother, who suddenly appeared much older and grown. He paid her and we left. Outside, as the bitter cold stung my face and the noise of traffic surrounded me, my brother opened the bag and popped a candy into his mouth. “Here” he said, placing the treasured cherries into my clumsy thick mittens, “for the ride home.” And then, putting his heavily padded arm around my shoulder, he added, “Come on, let’s go.”