I'll Tell You a Secret A Memory of Seven Summers

EARLY ONE MORNING 1950 Iam swimming up into the morning through green-gold water that is shot with sunrays as I surface. It is a dream and I float out of the image as I open my eyes. And I am in my own bed. I am lying on my smooth white sheet, my covers on the floor, and I can hear a wild tumult of birdsong: the trees, even the verandah vine, are full of so many birds singing that it is amazing that everyone isn't awake, but all the sounds are outside. Within the house all is quiet and everyone still sleeps. I lean up on my elbow to look through my wide open window. The air is cool but the day will be warm, maybe even hot. I hitch myself up to look out and better see my maple tree, which is at this moment seething with the singing birds. It is huge and ancient and because of the way the lawn slopes below the house, I am almost on a level with its crown. The leaves nearest me are in shadow and the sun is lighting the ones only at the very top on the eastern side. The sunlit ones are the bright new green of early summer. Below me the grass is dark green, still wet with dew. I know just how it would feel, cold, under my feet and that I would leave silver tracks. By my new watch I see that it is six o'clock. I will think about my secret. I rest my arms on the sill and notice how brown they already are, making the little blond hairs on them look white as they catch the light. I am wearing pale orange pajamas, short-sleeved, many times washed, in fact a faint peach colour now, and rather shrunken. Or is it that I am now so tall? My arms and legs have lengthened even since Christmas. At every time of year my first ritual on waking, when I am home, is to study the leaves and bark of my maple. I know from their look how early it is; also in the evenings, how late. I am not someone who really needs a watch but time is important to me and I like to be precise. And I like my watch, which is a man's and what I asked for. On long summer evenings, I stare at the leaves until the shadows have gathered and deepened and then it is important that I sleep at once. I must not still be awake when darkness overtakes the tree. From the tree, I also know the weather and the temperature: in winter the tree's unprotected skin pales, becomes dry and brittle, grey with the cold. Watching from my window, I know how it would feel under my hand. And it darkens with warmth and moisture on a milder day while the snow around its base greys and coarsens. In spring the bark is a richer brown and I watch the thin, high branches, the fragile black twigs against the sky, and think of the sap mounting. My brother and I pound in sharp spigots, one to each side to hang a pail on, and tap it. The sap tastes of spring, thin and green. We boil it down and make a tiny jug of syrup. I am obsessed with seasons as well as time. I am a very odd child, according to my sisters. Even though I am a quiet person, it seems that I am turning out to be the most extreme member of the family, in some ways anyway. I am not sure how much choice a person has in who she turns out to be. The difficulty is in wanting the things and being the ways other people expect. A person can make herself do certain things perhaps, but she can't make herself want to. In my case I don't even make myself do them. The situation is getting worse because I am about to be fourteen. Increasingly I feel the push of other people's expectations on me of what a girl is supposed to be and I can't want any of the things I'm supposed to be eager for. My sisters have gone ahead of me along the path into, and in the case of my older sister, out the other side of, adolescence. They have had to endure miseries and perils, and I have watched in dread the tortures of shyness and holding back in the case of one, and the worrying butColeman, Anne is the author of 'I'll Tell You a Secret A Memory of Seven Summers' with ISBN 9780771022784 and ISBN 0771022786.