Fleeing the hygienist.

Whenever I’m in the dentist’s chair having my teeth cleaned, I try to go elsewhere in my mind. To escape the scraping and intermittent zings of sensitivity, I imagine I’m back in my childhood home, where I move around, looking closely at various physical details.

I know the place well—I lived in this house in Oklahoma City throughout my entire childhood and during most college vacation stints. Even though it’s been more than two decades since I’ve been there, I can visualize things with impressive clarity when I’m really focusing.

I thought I’d take you on a little tour of a few of the highlights.
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• The tornado cellar. This didn’t play an important role in my life; I just thought you might like to know about what, in hindsight, was a very Oklahoma real estate feature. It was sited in an outdoor area we called “the side of the house.” On the ground was a concrete slab inset with double doors. If you opened them, you saw a flight of stairs leading down to a small, dark space that contained stagnant water, rotting leaves, and the danger of snakes. I don’t believe anyone in our family ever set foot down there.

 

• The stable. Honestly, I now wonder if this was really a stable at all. I always thought it was, as a kid. I definitely lobbied, unsuccessfully, to have my parents put a horse in it for me. (There was at least one horse living in my neighborhood when I was young—so it wasn’t a ridiculous idea.)
  
  ​Our horseless stable—maybe it was just a metal shed—stood in what we called “the way back” (of our backyard). It was next to the large garden where my father grew impressive crops of corn and tomatoes, and it housed his red rototiller. Abutting the back of this “stable” was a small fenced-in area where my father would dump grass clippings and raked-up leaves for composting. I used to climb up on the roof of the stable and jump into the pile of yard detritus. Whee!
  
  And I may as well share the following fact about this building, too: One of our little mutts, Floyd (learn how I stole him here), chose this dirt-floored, quiet shelter to die in. And I, unfortunately, was the one who discovered his lifeless body there.
  
  Don’t worry—I’ve gotten over it. Let’s move on.

 

• The carport. While we’re touring  the outside property, let’s stroll over to the building we called “the carport,” which was a free-standing garage-like structure with no sides, other than some abutting wooden fencing. We never put cars in the carport, but it held our stacked fireplace wood, an old neonatal incubator my father used for germinating seeds, and a metal shed housing various gardening supplies. A basketball hoop was affixed to the edge of the carport’s roof above the driveway, and my much older, much taller, brothers and I would play there.
  
  ​It pains me to report that as a teenager I spent time on top of that carport slathered in Johnson’s baby oil (even on my FACE), roasting in the sun, preparing my young skin cells to go cancerous in adulthood. (Fool! Fool!)

• Hiding spots. I’ve written before about how I loved to fold myself in to small spaces when I was a kid. In my bedroom was the modest closet I turned into a hideout, complete with a flashlight attached to the hanging rod. Nearby, beneath my toy shelves, was the deep wooden drawer that I would occasionally climb into and close from the inside. Walk out of this bedroom and over to our living room, and you can see the cabinet where my friend Amy Wyant and I occasionally concealed ourselves to do a bit of spying. All of these recollections are making me realize that I (and Amy) were seriously tiny.

Harry Potter’s under-the-stairs accommodations would have been my dream come true.

• The entryway. Our house had two different front doors, for some reason. (Why have I never even thought about this oddity until now?) The door closest to the driveway was used daily; the farther-away one was where guests would enter when my parents hosted dinner parties. (How did my parents get people to walk to this distant door, I wonder?)
  
  Anyway, when you walked through our “regular” front door, you entered a short hallway and faced “the pouting chair.” This was a high-backed, low-seated chair that was traditionally supposed to be where children would spend what we now call a “time-out.” I’m pretty sure one of my father’s patients (or their parent) painted it and gave it to him as a gift. The chair was never used for pouting in my house, but it was always in sight.
  
  On the left side of this entryway was a handsome wooden trunk next to a floor-to-ceiling mirror where I spent entirely too much time looking at myself during my adolescence. On the right-hand wall were a scattering of hooks holding my father’s extensive hat collection. He often wore a flat cap or beret, so there were a number of those. Also: bucket hats for yard work, a dandy tan cowboy hat, and something I’ve always called a “Sherlock Holmes hat” but have just learned is technically a deerstalker cap. ​

My niece now has the pouting chair, which she photographed for me.

• The kitchen. Turning right from the entryway, you found yourself in the heart of our house—the kitchen. I could easily write thousands of words about this room, with its view of our beautiful backyard, the wide windowsills filled with African violets and various cobalt-blue glass vases and pitchers. An arched prism hung next to one window, casting bright rainbows that drifted slowly around the room.
  
  The many cabinets were painted a rust color, and the floor was covered with faux-brick dimensional linoleum. Central to the space was a substantial island with a butcher block surface and a stove. Above it all was a skylight.
  
  This was the arena where my mother performed her magic. To call her “a good cook” would trivialize her abilities. I want to stay on topic here and focus on the physical space, but when I tell you that this room is where sauces simmered, legs of lamb roasted, and pots de crème chilled, I am telling you that my mother was a fabulous, fearless culinarian.

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I could point you to so much more: my sandbox, made from a tractor tire painted blue; the wallpaper of big, bold daisies covering the ceiling of my first bedroom; the electric tie rack that held (and could rotate) my father’s scores of bow ties. But now I will wrap up this memory stroll, thank you for accompanying me, and encourage you to perform a similar excursion the next time you want to distract yourself.