This is another one from my Rabbittown series. It involves growing up with three brothers before my sister came along. It originally happened in the winter, but I think the lesson is fitting for this month of giving thanks and sharing candy with strangers and friends alike.

 

Conducted

The first house I called home, the one where my memories began, was a two story with a basement. It had a furnace with forced air heat and ducts (as we called the floor registers) peppered throughout the house. The staircase to the upstairs had two landings. One after only two steps for the first turn, and then another at the top of perhaps twelve or fifteen steps. This was a big landing with a huge square duct, the biggest in the house, nestled into the corner under a window. There were three more steps to reach the top floor. My bedroom was the first one on the right, the closest to the stairs. My brothers’ room, my parent’s room, the bathroom and linen closet lined the rest of the hallway and filled the top story.

I am the second of five children. I have an older brother, two younger ones, and a younger sister. There were four of us born in less time than today’s average car loan commitment. My little sister came along when I was seven. So for awhile, it was just me and my brothers.

When it came to sharing, none of us were very fond of the action of altruism. I think this is typical of many children, but I think it is harder for those in larger families. I had three brothers, who, in the haze of memory, seemed more like three savage marauders rather than three little boys. In my memory they are always dirty, with food on their faces, hands, and shirts, dirt on their knees and things stuck in their hair, always running, taking, and grabbing.

And it seemed that we squabbled over everything and anything. There was very little we had control of or dominion over so we used what we could. There came a point as we were growing up that my brothers noticed that I was different. That ‘I’ was not one of ‘them.’

The realization was more than just seeing our physical distinctions. Before my younger sister came along, I had my own room, different toys and clothes, and a different schedule. When we were young enough to not notice, everything was just fine and we were a group. But when they became old enough to see the deviations, I was no longer an ally, now I was possibly some form of prey. I was the one who was pointed out, pursued, and persecuted.

They outnumbered me and were fearless in a way that I wasn’t. They seemed to instinctively know how to gang up or block the exits. They weren’t graceful and stealthy like big cats or anything. They were more like 40 pound little human wasps, buzzing and swiping, one reaching in on one side and when I would try to fight that one off, another would attack when my head was turned, intent on getting my sweet after they had inhaled theirs. They cheered each other on, as a win for either of them was a win for all of them. And it wasn’t just my food or treats they wanted.

They would take over the couch and I would get to share the floor with the dog, I always got moved to the inside seat at any table anywhere and everywhere – squat, kicked, and trapped. I would get put in the back-back of the station wagon (before seat-belt laws and mini-vans were a thing) as they took over the back seat and my parents had the front. We also vied for the ducts on cold winter mornings and the big square duct on the stairs landing was the most coveted one of all.

I loved the ducts in that house, even with the random off and on that I didn’t understand until later. And of course my favourite one was the big one on the stairs landing. I loved standing there in the mornings in a huge flannel nightgown that my mother had sewn. It covered me from neck to wrist to ankle. It had ample material for a growing squirming kid and more than enough coverage to balloon and billow from the breeze below and expand over the entire duct.

The dress would fill full of air so that I felt like one of those Elizabethan queens or one of those great ladies I had seen in paintings, all puffy and grand. I would bask in the thought, nodding my head slightly here and there to my imaginary subjects.

It was a nice fantasy, but what I really wanted was to get the air to blow my hair up straight like the bride of Frankenstein. I would frequently manipulate my nightdress to direct the air to my hair, but I never seemed to get enough force to raise any of it more than an inch or two. My hair was halfway down my back then so it wasn’t the spectacular or spooky result I was looking for.

But the duct meant more to me than trying to look like a horror movie icon, although it was high on the list. I felt like I knew the meaning of the duct and that my brothers did not.

I knew that the duct giveth and the duct taketh away. My first grown-up ring went to the duct in the hallway, just past the front door to the house. The small gold hands holding the tiny gold heart tumbled into the darkness, never to be seen again. A similar gold heart, this one adorning my first bra, suffered a parallel fate and was eaten by the maw of my favoured mid-stair duct. The kitchen duct was routinely fed my errant jacks, and the dining room duct seemed to get my bobby pins and barrettes. Not to mention the countless quarters and other assorted coins that slipped from my fingers and through those slots, followed by my lament as I stared into the slats and mourned my loss as it clanked down the dark chute.

Yet I had made my most prized craft (at the time) using the duct. It was a candle made of layers of paraffin wax mixed with food colouring. The different colours were melted in small tins and then put together in a bigger tin to make a large rainbow candle. It had a wick made of waxed yarn tied around a pencil and secured across the top of the can with a penny weighing it to the bottom. It was the first ‘adult’ craft I could do without having to involve an adult once I had the supplies, thanks to the warming and melting powers of the duct.

At one point, I also became tall enough to toggle the thermostat if I stood on tiptoe. It was here that I felt the power of control – I could make the hot air blow myself and race up the stairs to be the first on the duct, in my rightful place.

And, for some reason, whether it was just my proximity to the space, or my puffed up and formidable (if not foolish) appearance, or the obvious danger of trying to push and shove for position on a stair landing, my brothers pretty much gave me this space. I protected it like it was my territory. It was the one thing I wouldn’t share and couldn’t be ousted from. I could billow with my back against the wall, looking out the window at the birds, the poles, and the power lines, the weather, the sky – it didn’t matter – it was all mine. It was the only place in the house where I felt I had dominion, and I lorded my position over my brothers whenever and however I could.

Then one frigid February morning, as I was standing kitty-corner on my grate of greatness looking out the window and down the hallway in turns, I willingly shared my territory. I was up, my youngest brother was up, and my mother (a teacher) had just hung up the phone. The wind was high and howling, the snow was dense and beating on the windows and the echo of the phone call let us know that there would be no school that day.

I don’t know why I did it. It was probably the excitement of a day off for an epic St. John’s storm that we would be enjoying, or the prospect of pancakes or toutons for breakfast instead of oatmeal and toast, or getting to watch TV until the storm stopped and we could get out and enjoy the aftermath. Either way, generosity got the better of me and I deigned to share my big square hot-air throne with my youngest brother.

I gestured at him from the hallway where he stood to come down the three stairs to the landing. I moved closer to the window sill to make room for him. He took a place. He was wearing over-sized flannel pyjamas, also made by mom, except in a boy’s version with pants and a top and patterned in plaid instead of tiny blue flowers like mine. His pyjamas billowed out like my nightgown did. It made him look like a very thick little strongman with a teeny head.

His presence also made the air move so that the curtains waved like they were underwater and swaying to strong currents. I marveled at the difference it made it my nightgown. The air was more compressed and I was assuming a more rectangle shape than the square I was when I stood alone on my throne. And then I felt a tickling around my earlobes. I twitched to see that it was the ends of my hair, rising with the force of the air. I tilted my head and shoulders a little forward towards my brother and was rewarded with the rest of my hair flying up a-la the bride of Frankenstein. It made waves like the curtains and looked to me just like her waved hair in the movie and pictures I had seen, except for the colouring.

I was tickled and fascinated, pleased as punch. I moved back and forth like the lady in the movie, jerky and robotic, my brother accommodating my movements and my hair following a pattern of its own as the air moved around me. It waved, it waxed and waned, it crested and troughed, it concentrated and dispersed, all the while defying gravity and staying up. It made me feel powerful and supernatural, like I could fly – or at least almost hover.

We stayed on the duct, playing with the air and our big pyjamas, feeling large and in charge, until we could smell the toutons and we left the heat of the landing for the warmth and promise of the kitchen.

But the feeling of the shared square of air stayed with me. The knowledge that the new sensation of my hair flying around me and my nightgown getting big enough that I might morph from the bride of Frankenstein into Mary Poppins and rise right up to the ceiling only happened because I opened up my territory to my sometimes enemy.

Through the duct I learned a lot of things. I learned about aerodynamics and innovation. I experienced sacrifice and loss. And I had felt the power of control.

But on that cold February morning, I think the duct taught me its best lesson – that some things are much better when they are shared.

 

©CRodgers

Happy Thanksgiving!