On Sleeping

Elvis at 8 wks.--the day we brought him home

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Murray Ave. That's the little street where I grew up in a mid-sized city in upstate New York  It was a shabby little tree-lined lane in a decaying neighborhood. When I was growing up I never saw the shabbiness. Children see differently.

There was an elderly couple who lived at the other end of our street. Their last name was Ladd. The man's name was Harter and his wife was Catherine...or maybe Ann. I can't remember because there was another old woman on our little street whose name was Ladd, too. They were not related.

It was the mid 1970's, yet these old people still wore clothes from their own youth so that they looked quite old-fashioned and stern, and I was afraid of them. I worried that they did not like little children. Now I know that back then old people were very frugal about clothes and things because they had lived through the Depression. It had set their faces in grim lines and whitened their hair.

One hot summer afternoon my friends and I were playing near the old couple's house and we saw Mr. Ladd asleep on his screened front porch. He was lying on an old couch. His mouth was open, and he was  very still. He looked dead. My friends and I whispered excitedly about it: "Should we tell Mrs. Ladd?" I don't think we did. Anyway, she would have chased us off with a broom.

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Rabbits look dead when they are asleep. I think it must be part of their defense mechanism. No one wants to go near a dead thing.

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I like to watch my husband when he is sleeping. He doesn't look dead; he looks nice. I am always tempted to wake him up and say, "Hi."

I wonder what I look like when I  am sleeping?

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Mr. and Mrs. Ladd's was the only house that gave out full size candy bars on Halloween. They were nicer than they looked.