Even though my clock radio alarm wasn’t turned on, I woke up just after 7:15. Light came in my bedroom window, but it was the light of a cloudy day. I knew that because the Earth’s axis was tilted, and it took a whole year to revolve around the sun, this time of year the sun came up a couple minutes earlier each day, so now it was at least daytime when I walked to school, which was better than back in January and February when I left the house in the dark.

I heard our cat Midnight crying as usual, outside on the roof below my window, wanting me to let him in. I wondered why my alarm hadn’t gone off, because I knew it was Monday, because yesterday was Sunday.

It had been kind of a strange Sunday because we actually went to CHURCH, which we’d never done before. Mom told us about it last week, but she said it wasn’t like a regular church, because “Unitarianism” wasn’t like a regular religion. Mom had always said that though she believed in god, she thought religion was really bad. When she first told us we were going, I was worried that maybe they’d want ME to believe in god too, since I’d decided back when I was in third grade that I DIDN’T believe in god. But I never told mom or dad, because they might think I was really bad and some kind of weirdo. But when she said that some Unitarians didn’t even believe in god, and the minister, the guy in charge of the church, was an ATHEIST, which meant HE didn’t believe in god either, I felt better. Mom said she was joining to “connect with more of the progressive activist community in town”.

So she went to the “service” with the other grownups and David and I went to different “Sunday school” classes with other kids our age. Maryjane’s kids, Zeke and Gordon, were in my class, but none of my school friends were. The grownup woman in charge of the class told us about the beginnings of the Jewish religion before Jesus came along and started the Christian one. I always liked history stuff so it was interesting about the two ancient Jewish temples, the first destroyed by the Babylonians and the second by the Romans. Mom had read to us about that in that “A Child’s History of the World” book when I was a little kid back at our old house.

So I remembered that I hadn’t set my alarm last night because it was spring break, and I didn’t have to go to school today. I could feel my shoulders relaxing at the thought as I cranked my casement window open to let Midnight in. The cold wet air blew against my face, it smelled like wet pavement and spruce tree and it felt like it would never get warm.

I could hardly remember a day that wasn’t cold. There had been that one day back towards the end of January where it got really warm, the “January Thaw” the grownups called it. It was pretty amazing, and all the snow started to melt, but then the next day we had that crazy blizzard and got TWENTY INCHES of new snow, I had never seen so much snow on the ground, especially after the trucks plowed the streets and pushed all the snow up in even bigger piles between the streets and the sidewalks, which was kind of cool actually, like readymade walls for snow forts and snowball fights. And it had been cold ever since, icy cold or at least slushy cold, and there were still old, now gray or brown piles of snow in places, kind of melting but not quite all the way. But Sonny Elliot had said last night on the Channel 4 news that there was a warm front coming from the south and to expect it to finally warm up later in the week.

Midnight leapt up and onto the windowsill and then onto my desk, his fur all puffed out because of the cold, but also with tiny drops of water on it, so I quickly picked him up threw him on the floor before he could shake his body and scatter those water drops all over my desk. I noticed he was getting bigger and heavier, and I opened my door so he could escape my room and head down to the basement as he always did. Mom said that cats were “creatures of habit”.

So because I didn’t need to think about school and getting ready to go to school like a regular Monday, my mind just thought about OTHER stuff that was interesting. Last night I’d seen the Turtles sing that “Happy Together” song I really liked on the Smothers Brothers show. It was the happiest song I think I’d EVER heard. Whenever I heard the chorus it just sent shivers and goosebumps down my arms…

I can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you
For all my life
When you’re with me, baby, the skies will be blue
For all my life

That’s the way I wanted to be in love some day when I was older, “so happy together”, when I was done with all this junior high stuff that was driving me crazy! And when he sang, “No matter how they TOSS the dice it had to be”, it just felt that it WAS going to happen SOMEHOW, there was no bad dice roll possible.

On the show the main two Turtle guys were really cool because that one guy with the shiny gold shirt and the french horn who sang the harmonies was really silly with the other main guy with the bow tie who was the lead singer. Most rock bands I’d seen on TV weren’t silly at all. They were usually serious or maybe kind of lovey-dovey like the Beach Boys sometimes.

I wondered whether to turn on my radio. Hearing CKLW, especially in the morning, would feel like a school day, but it was a vacation day instead. But I finally decided to turn it on anyway. I guess I was a creature of habit too. I liked turning on the radio to see what song might be playing. It was that great new Vandella’s one, “Jimmy Mack”, they’d been playing since last month. It was about this older girl who wanted to “be true” to her boyfriend Jimmy, who I guess had been away for a while, but this other boy really liked her and she kind of liked him too and was getting worried that she might let him be her boyfriend instead. So she was telling Jimmy he had to get back soon or else she wasn’t sure she could hold out…

My arms are missing you
My lips feel the same way too
I’ve tried so hard to be true
Like I promised I’d do

So I guess being girlfriend boyfriend but older, they were holding and kissing each other, so like making out and maybe even feeling each other up. So she wanted to “be true” to Jimmy, like dad wasn’t to mom when he had sex with that other woman and mom felt “betrayed”.

But this boy keeps coming around
He’s trying to wear my resistance down

So maybe “being true” was pretty hard to do when there was somebody else you liked too who really really wanted to be your new boyfriend or girlfriend, and maybe even the same if you were married…

He calls me on the phone
About three times a day
Now my heart doesn’t listen to
What he has to say

So part of her doesn’t WANT to fall in love with this other guy, but she’s afraid another part of her DOES…

But this loneliness I have within
Keeps reaching out to be his friend

That all made sense. Like part of me wanted to be friends with Abby, like Molly and I used to be, but another part didn’t want any of my other friends to see me talking with her or walking with her to school…

I wanna say, I’m not getting any stronger
I can’t hold out very much longer
Trying hard to be true
But Jimmy, he talks just as sweet as you

The older girl in the song was telling us all the real things different parts of her were feeling, kind of like what mom would do when she’d ask me to sit in the rocking chair and she’d tell me stuff that was bothering her. I guess grownups were more like kids that way than I had thought. They didn’t really have everything figured out like I thought when I was a little kid. Dad I guess didn’t either, but HE never talked about it.

Hey, Jimmy
Jimmy
Oh, Jimmy Mack
When are you coming back?
Jimmy (hey, Jimmy)
Jimmy
Oh, Jimmy Mack
You better hurry back

It had been cold and rainy all weekend and the weather report on CKLW said it was going to be cold again today. I looked out my window and I could still see piles of snow here and there now all dirty brown or gray, and areas of muddy ground where there wasn’t grass, and the streets were wet and shiny in the morning light. Yeah it was “spring break” but it wasn’t spring yet. They did say it would be warming up in the next couple days, but it felt like it was going to be cold forever. Still I was happy that I didn’t have to go to school.

I had some money saved up from allowance, shoveling snow and babysitting, and wanted to make a run to the stores, but it had been raining all weekend. Not MOM’S stores, like Food and Drug, A and P, and Jacobson’s, but mine, like Riders, Discount Records and the Blue Front.

At Riders there might be a new Avalon Hill game or maybe I could get two more of those steering wheel speed controllers for my Aurora racetrack so I could make a four-lane track.

At Discount Records there might be a new Beatles album, since there hadn’t been a new one since “Revolver” last summer, maybe a new one with that weird song I had woken up to on the radio just now. Or a new Bill Cosby, Smothers Brothers or other comedy record.

At the Blue Front maybe a new Batman or Flash comic, or Classics Comic. Or maybe a sci-fi book or James Bond, though I’d read half the James Bond books already and I was starting to get bored with them. They weren’t as interesting as some of the sci-fi books I’d read lately. Like that “Foundation” book by Isacc Asimov, and there were two more books, “Foundation and Empire” and “Second Foundation”, that continued that story. Maybe the books I could get in the library instead, where I didn’t have to buy them, though I did like looking at all the covers of the paperback ones at the Blue Front, or at the back cover to see what the story was about. The regular ones at the library didn’t have anything on the covers, though it was still the same story and it didn’t cost money.

It wasn’t raining today, but it was still pretty cold, and riding your bike in the cold made it feel even colder, though all that pedaling warmed your body up under your jacket, gloves and hat. I could just stay home and play with my racing track, maybe a couple hockey games with David, or set up Blitzkrieg for the hundredth time. Well not really the HUNDREDTH time, but a lot. But none of that sounded that fun. I wanted it to be spring. I wanted to be outside. I looked at the Blitzkrieg game set up under my bed and realized that I wanted something new and different, like whatever that NEW AVALON HILL GAME was that they might have at Riders.

I went downstairs to eat breakfast. Mom still bought Cheerios and Country Corn Flakes for David and me, and even sometimes she was buying sugary cereals like Fruit Loops and Trix that David kept asking for because he saw the commercials on TV. But I was starting to like eating the Kellogg’s Concentrate she bought for herself. It came in a small gold box and instead of opening the top part and the bag inside and pouring it into a bowl, it had this little metal spout on the side of the box that you opened with one finger and poured it out into your bowl.

And there was a special way you had to do it so it tasted good. With regular cereal, you usually poured the dry cereal in the bowl first, then poured the milk on top of it. But if you did Concentrate that way, putting it in the bowl first, it just turned to sticky mush when you poured the milk over it and didn’t taste very good. But if you poured the milk in the bowl FIRST and then sprinkled the cereal on TOP, then it kind of floated on the milk and tasted nice and crunchy but still milky when you scooped it out with your spoon. And because it was Concentrate, that is, concentrated, you put way less in your bowl then you would for regular cereal.

Mom liked it I guess because she was always trying to lose weight these days. I liked it because it was different than the kids’ cereals like Cheerios, Country Cornflakes, and Trix and Fruit Loops that I usually had, and it made me feel more like an older kid. NOT A GROWNUP, because I never wanted to be like that, like mom or dad or their grownup friends or my teachers, except maybe my first grade teacher, Hanny Zimmerman, who was more like an older kid, like Margie, or the people in all the rock and motown bands.

After eating breakfast, I decided I’d go to Rider’s first and see if they had any new Avalon Hill games. I put on my jacket, gloves and wool cap and headed out on my bicycle. I rode down Martin Place away from the Park towards Baldwin. It was cold and windy and the street was wet but it wasn’t icy. I turned left on Cambridge and rode by Josie’s house, remembering last spring when I snuck one of those stupid “Myrna loves Martin” pencils I had made in her mailslot, but then ran away when it sounded like someone inside heard it fall on the floor inside the door. On Cambridge I could really feel the wind coming down the street in my face as I rode into it, burning my cheeks and nose with the cold, but when I turned right on Lincoln and headed up towards Hill past the Shoultz’s big house, the wind wasn’t so bad. The excitement of going to Riders with enough money in my pocket to buy an Avalon Hill game kept me going.

I crossed Hill and rode into the parking lot between all those big buildings there and to the far end where there was that gate to Forest Court. From there down to Forest and right to South U where the really tall University Towers building was that had Orange Julius at the corner on the bottom. Just down from it was Miller’s, where I made a stop to get a cup of hot chocolate for 15 cents.

The place was full of people, sitting at every table and on every stool along the counter. Some were grownups, and some college students who looked like they were reading textbooks while they sipped something hot, maybe hot chocolate or maybe coffee, though I couldn’t even imagine drinking coffee, even when I got to be their age. There were also three other kids my age sitting at one of the tables that I finally recognized as my old classmates from Mrs Herman’s class last year – Stella, Julie and Alice. Alice had been in my Art class first semester, so we talked when we occasionally ended up sitting at the same table in class. I hadn’t seen Stella and Julie since last summer in the park, not that I ever talked to them, but they were friends of Myrna’s, so I wasn’t sure what they’d be thinking about me since the pencils thing.

Alice waved her hand at me and called out my name. “You can sit with us”, she said, “If you don’t mind sitting with GIRLS.” Stella and Julie chuckled, and they whispered some words to each other that I couldn’t hear. A couple of the college students heard her say that and they chuckled too, which was embarrassing. I nodded and went up to the counter and ordered my hot chocolate and paid the fifteen cents for it and just kind of stood there waiting, with everyone else sitting around me. Finally it was done and I took the nicely warm paper cup and walked over to the table with the three of them and sat in the empty chair.

“So what did Mr Beenhouwer give you in Art class?” Alice asked.

“An A”, I said.

“Figures”, she said, “He LIKED you.”

“What’d you get?” I asked her back.

“B plus”, she said, “And he gave me a TWO.”

That was that rating thing you got besides a letter grade about how hard you worked in a class, with one being the hardest and two less hard. I got twos in Unified Studies, even though I got A minuses for grades, and twos in Band where I got a B minus and a B plus. I’d even got a two in Math my first quarter, my favorite subject, even though I’d gotten an A. I got ones everywhere else.

“He gave me a B too”, said Stella, glancing at me but then looking away, like she was worried I was there, “He likes boys way more than girls.”

“Oh my god, I’ve got him THIS semester”, said Julie, giggling in a worried kind of way as she also glanced at me just for a second, “He DEFINITELY likes boys better than girls.”

We all stopped talking and sipped on our hot chocolate for a bit. It tasted so good going down my throat and warmed my whole chest and stomach, plus my hands holding the hot paper cup. We all looked at each other like no one knew what to say next.

“So It’s spring break but no spring”, Alice finally said, “I want to plant my garden but it’s still really cold out.” Stella and Julie nodded but didn’t say anything back to her, but both glanced at me again, like they were still both worried about me.

I knew that most boys acted different, maybe even kind of worried, when a girl started talking to them when they were with other boys, like she made everything change and they weren’t sure they liked it. I mean even I didn’t really like talking to girls when other boys were around, or even if just other girls were around. I guess I liked talking to kids, either boys or girls, when no one else was around. No one was watching what I said or what I liked or didn’t like except the person I was talking to.

So as I continued to sip my hot chocolate, I wondered if it was the same with a bunch of girls, when one boy, me this time, came to sit with them and it wasn’t just girls anymore. THEY were probably worried about what to say too. So I quickly finished my hot chocolate and figured I should go.

“Well”, I said, looking at Alice, “I should get going.” She pushed her lips together like she was a little sad and nodded. I wondered if she kind of liked me. We’d gotten to know each other a little bit in Art class first semester, but now I was in Industrial Arts, which was what all the boys had to take, and she was in Home Ec, which all the girls had to take. Abby had taken Home Ec first semester and she’d said it was okay because you got to make food and eat it and there was hardly any homework.

“Where you going?” Alice asked, “Isn’t it too cold to ride your bike?”

“Well, kind of”, I said, “But I’m going to Riders and It’s a long way to walk.”

“You gonna buy a model?” she asked, “My dad makes airplane models. I like those Weird-Oh ones. Did you ever make one of those?” I remembered Molly’s stepdad making those kind of models. I had made that “Huey’s Hut Rod”.

“Just the Huey’s Hut Rod one”, I said. She nodded.

“That one’s good”, she said, “I like his long green arms and big hands with long green fingers.” I nodded. It looked like Stella and Julie were waiting for Alice to finish talking to me before they said anything to Alice.

“So what kind of model are you going to buy?” Alice asked. I figured if I told her I was buying a game instead, that would be a bunch of OTHER questions. And I didn’t like telling anybody I played wargames because I figured they’d think I was weird. A lot of kids thought ALICE was weird because she wore those hippie clothes and liked to garden and grow stuff like mom did. Maybe, if it had just been Alice, and not the other girls, I MIGHT have told her.

So I just shook my head and said, “I don’t know.” She smiled and nodded.

“Just checking stuff out?” she asked, “Seeing what they got?” I nodded again and put my hand up in front of me and waved it back and forth just a little bit. James Bond would have said something like, “Ladies?” Not sure why I even thought of that. Alice waved her hand back the same way and turned to look at her friends and they looked at me and waved too, like it was time for me to go. I turned and went out the door and back outside.

Riding down South U towards the Union was hard because there were a lot of cars and the wind was blowing right in my face. On busy streets I usually rode on the sidewalk, but there were a lot of students and other people walking on them. But once I made it to the arch tunnel that you went through the building into the Diag it was easier. I went across the Diag and I could see groups of college students discussing stuff with each other, waving their hands and sounding like they had really strong feelings about things, like what the professors and the administration were doing. I had read in the Ann Arbor News that students were picketing in front of the Administration Building every Saturday. I liked seeing all the students talking to each other and figuring things out without any real grownups around.

I crossed the Diag to Williams and then down Williams on the sidewalk, finally past the library to Main. Then up Main to Washington and down to Riders. While I rode I thought about how much better it would be to be a college student, actually TALKING to other students about doing stuff to change the world rather than being in junior high and mostly afraid to talk to ANYONE that I saw at school about anything.

There was a guy I recognized working at the store, who looked like maybe he was a college student too. When he saw me come in he did a hello nod and I nodded back to him. I thought that was pretty cool, like there was no need for words, we both knew we were, as Mike would say, “comrades”. There were a couple older boys farther back in the store looking at the models.

I went to the area with the Avalon Hill games stacked up on the shelves. Games I already had – “Battle of the Bulge”, “Afrika Korps”, “Stalingrad”, “Blitzkrieg” and “Waterloo” – were stacked up on the shelves, along with that newer one, “Guadalcanal”, which I’d played at Craig’s house but didn’t have yet. Riders always had a special stand where they put the newest Avalon Hill game. It was one I hadn’t seen before called “Jutland”. I knew from books I’d read about World War One that that was the big naval battle in the North Sea between the German and British fleets. The box cover had this picture of a battleship at sea in the nighttime with the yellow and orange flames coming from all its firing big guns. It had the big letters “JUTLAND” across the top like the gray metal side of a ship, but there was that German Cross symbol from World War One instead of the “A”. It was a very cool cover.

The guy that worked there saw me looking at it and said, “That’s the latest from Avalon Hill. It was designed by this great young game designer, James Dunnigan. He was just twenty three years old when he designed it. Just a few years older than me.” I thought that was cool too and nodded.

I took the game off its special stand and laid it flat on the table and opened the cover. It made that cool whooshing sound and there was that ink smell of a new game. The first thing I wanted to see, like always, was the board, but there WASN’T one.

“Where’s the board?” I asked him. He grinned.

“That’s the thing”, he said, “There isn’t one. I read an article about this guy and he wants to make games that are more like the real thing. So no board. You place and maneuver your ships on the floor or a large table and use those special cardboard gauges in there to move and turn your ships or figure out which enemy ships are in range of your guns.”

“Wow”, I said, as I took the rule books and those gauges he talked about out of the box. Then I saw all the thick shiny cardboard sheets of ship counters, like in “Bismarck” and “Midway”, but so many more.

“There are over two hundred ship counters”, he said, “You can have MASSIVE naval battles if you want to.” Now THAT sounded really cool.

Reading quickly through the rules, both the basic and advanced ones, because I never just played the basic game, I saw how it all worked. It was kind of like the “Midway” and “Bismarck” games, except you moved your “task forces” of ships on the map SHEETS instead of map boards and you called out the letter and number of the square your ships were that you wanted to search. If the enemy ships were in the same square then you’d fight a battle. Then you’d set up all the ships in the battle on a big table or the floor even, and move your ships into battle and shoot at each other.

Like the other naval games – “Midway” and “Bismarck” – it looked like a harder game to play by yourself, which seemed to be the way I was mostly playing my Avalon Hill games these days. It also looked like you needed a really big table, like Craig’s pingpong table or a lot of floorspace, for the naval battles, and I was used to playing my other Avalon Hill games under my bed. I could get the “Guadalcanal” game instead, but Craig had that one and I’d already played it over at his house. I mean it was fun and all, and easier to play by yourself, but the map wasn’t very interesting, because it was basically just a bunch of jungle squares on the island that were, like forest or mountain squares in other games, easier to defend and harder to move through.

But none of my wargame friends – Craig, Vincent or Jake – had “Jutland” yet because it was brand new. And it had over TWO HUNDRED ships, and as the guy that worked there said, you could have MASSIVE ship battles. That just sounded way more exciting to me right now. And since Vincent really liked naval games, I could probably get him to play it with me and he lived just down the street. He would be so excited and impressed that I had gotten the game, because he always thought of me as this very cool older kid, and I liked that he did.

After my long ride here to Riders on a cold day that wasn’t spring yet, even though it didn’t have a board that I could set up under the bed and easily play by myself, I decided I just had to buy it. Yeah I could buy two new controllers for my Aurora racetrack instead, but that just didn’t seem as exciting. The game was six dollars plus 24 cents tax. That left me almost two more dollars to buy something else, if I wanted to at the Blue Front on the way back.

***

I slept in Tuesday morning and only just semi woke up and noticed my clock radio showed “9:24”, way later than I usually got up. I liked just being in bed with my eyes closed and feeling all relaxed that it was Spring Break week and I had most of it still ahead of me. More school seemed far in the future, at least if I pretended.

I had stayed up late last night watching this “Run for Your Life” show on Channel 4 from ten to eleven with mom. Mom liked to watch it, but I’d only seen it a couple of times, because it was on super late on a school night. But since it was spring break, she said I could watch it this time. It was about this guy Paul who had this rare disease and his doctor told him he had only one to two years left to live. Since he had nothing to lose, he quit his job as a lawyer and just went all over the world having adventures and helping people.

So in this one, he got caught in this big thing involving a million-dollar robbery of this collection of famous jewels and ancient stuff. This rich badguy made it look like Paul was the one that had the stolen jewels so the real robbers, who worked for the rich guy, could get away. Paul had to outsmart everyone and take some crazy risks to clear his name, risks he was only willing to take because he knew he was dying anyway. Watching it on the small black-and-white TV in mom’s dark room, made it even more dark and strange.

Then when it was over at eleven, I had watched the local news with her and there was a story about civil rights leaders saying that Detroit was a racial “time bomb” because black people were being discriminated against when they tried to buy houses in the city and were also harassed by police who were mostly all white. Mom kept shaking her head and saying “dear me”.

I had finally gone to bed at 11:30, but had trouble falling asleep because I was thinking about that “Run for Your Life” show story and the news about what might be happening in Detroit. I had only been to Detroit a few times, to see a Tigers game, but I knew that was where a lot of black people lived and all the Motown music came from. There weren’t many black people in Ann Arbor or black kids at my school.

Though it was nice getting to sleep in, I didn’t want to waste my vacation day. I got myself up to a sitting position on my bed and looked down at the carpet which had long lines of cardboard ship counters from my new Jutland game.

I’d started playing it by myself yesterday, though it was hard to play both sides because of all the hidden movement. But the instructions had solitaire rules and I had mapped out all my Search Plotting Sheets for both sides, rolled the dice to see which one was used, and got into a battle, which I had started to play on the floor. But I’d gotten kind of bored with it, especially because it wasn’t the same as when you were playing on a board. I realized that the game board was my favorite part of all my Avalon Hill games, but I still had left all the ships set up on the floor figuring I might play some more today.

Making sure not to step on any of the ship counters, I went to the window in my room, because I was used to letting Midnight in. He wasn’t out there and I figured mom had let him in the front door. I wondered if he’d cried under my window like usual, but I just didn’t hear him. I cranked open the window anyway.

The air was cold, but not like freezing cold like it had been yesterday. I could smell the wet pavement and spruce tree like yesterday, but now other plant smells like wet grass. Something inside me got excited that maybe today it would really be spring.

I got dressed and as I headed down the upstairs hall I could see that David wasn’t in his room and I could tell that mom wasn’t in hers, though I peeked in her open door just to check anyway. As I started down the stairs I stopped at the small window where the stairway turned before it went down into the living room. Out the window I could see our side yard, and saw mom sitting on this cushion thing on the ground in her sweatpants and big floppy dark blue Michigan sweatshirt pruning the hedge along the edge of the driveway. I hadn’t seen her outside doing any pruning since last fall.

I continued down the stairs into the living room and around to the kitchen. I didn’t see David anywhere, and I even went down in the basement to look for him but the only one down there was Midnight, sleeping on the dryer. David must have gone out. I carefully made myself a bowl of Kellogg’s Concentrate, putting in just the right amount of milk first and then sprinkling just the right amount of the tiny little cereal flakes on top. I looked out the kitchen window over the sink where I could see mom pruning. She always had kind of a smile on her face when she pruned, I figured that was one of her favorite things to do.

After I finished my cereal I put on my jacket and went out the front door and stood on the stoop and looked around. There was even more the smell of plants in the air. I mean the smell of the spruce trees was always there, even in the winter, but now I could smell all the other plants too. And the air, though still chilly, was different too, like it had an energy in it that hadn’t been there yesterday when I rode my bike to Riders. It felt like the energy of all the plants just starting to come to life. There were still little piles of dirty snow here and there, especially where there was lots of shade from a house or a tree, but they looked all wet and shiny like they were melting.

David’s friends – Arnold, Al and Gus – who lived in the next three houses down from us on Martin Place came racing up the street on their bicycles, Arnold in the lead, he was a year older than the other two. They turned left on to Wells and disappeared behind the side of our house. I looked out in the park and there were kids playing. Some older kids playing a half-court game on the basketball court while younger kids took shots at the other end and watched them. Girls were swinging on the swings and a bunch of other girls were playing on the big concrete tubes. And a bunch of boys were playing soccer over on the soccer fields like they usually did every morning before school and at lunchtime before afternoon class. I guess they were creatures of habit too, because they were used to playing soccer every weekday, and even though it was spring break, they decided to play it anyway. It had definitely been the funnest part of going to school last year and in fifth grade.

“Hey Coolie”, mom called out from the other side of the hedge along the driveway where she was pruning, “See how well all the Pachysandra survived the winter?”

I looked down to my right below the stoop to the square bed of dirt full of those little green plants. I guess mom had removed all the dead leaves from around them she had put there to “mulch” them for the winter. The plants all looked shiny green and happy.

“Hey Sweetie”, mom called out again, “Come over here for a minute. I want to show you something.” I walked down the steps of the stoop and over across the driveway to where she was sitting by the hedge. She had her big floppy hat on and her dirty finger pointed at a branch of the hedge that looked dead with no leaves on it. There was a little brown shiny nub kind of bubbling out of the dark gray branch.

“That’s a new bud”, she said, her voice sounding happy like the plants, “See how the rest of the branch above it doesn’t have another bud like that, so I cut off that dead branch just above the bud.” She snipped that part above it off with her pruning shears.

“That’s part of pruning, Coolie”, she said, smiling, “I could probably teach you how to do it yourself in a half hour.” I nodded. She had been showing and telling me about pruning for years.

“Where’d David go?” I asked. She made kind of a silly face.

“Not sure”, she said, pointing in the direction of Wells heading down towards Baldwin, “But he went that-a-way on his bike. Maybe to Eddie’s house.”

I wondered why she didn’t ask David where he was going, because he wasn’t a big kid like me, he was only eight years old.

“Why didn’t you ask him where he was going?” I asked her. She looked at me like I’d seen her look at some grownups when she was having an argument with them at one of her parties, like she was trying to figure out what I was thinking.

“I didn’t ask you where YOU were going when you were eight”, she said, and then she raised and lowered her eyebrows, like I should really think about that. That made me kind of mad, but she was right as always, and I didn’t say anything and just nodded again.

Not saying anything was kind of a little kid thing to do, but if I said something, it would have been like, “You know… You’re right, I’d forgotten about that”, and there was part of me that didn’t want to tell her that she was right all the time. It just wasn’t fair!

I noticed Abby walking her bike across the street towards us. She parked it in our driveway and walked over to where I was standing and mom was sitting by the hedge she was pruning.

“Hi Coop”, she said, “Hi Jane.” She used to say “Hi Mrs Zale”, but mom kept telling her to call her Jane, and finally she was doing that.

“Hi Abby”, mom said, looking up at her and did her biggest smile, “Off for a ride on your bicycle? That looks like fun.”

“First real day of spring”, Abby said. She had her jacket on but it wasn’t zipped up. “I gotta get out of the house.”

“I hear you, young lady”, mom said, “I felt it this morning too, and I just had to get out and prune this hedge. Been looking at it for months, thinking that it needed a real cutback.” It struck me that Abby was MY friend but she was talking with my mom instead of me. But then mom had said something to her and I hadn’t.

“I’ll show you how sometime, if you’re interested”, mom said to her.

“That would be cool, Jane”, Abby said, “Really cool, thanks”, and she smiled. She sounded like an older kid, even kind of like a grownup.

I wondered why I couldn’t talk to mom like that, more like an older kid, which I was. She seemed to already know that I was, so that was at least good, but I wanted to just talk to people more, ask more questions and say things about them that I noticed.

I pointed at Abby’s bike and asked her, “What size are your wheels?” It looked like a new bike and hers looked bigger than my twenty-four inch ones.

“Twenty-six inch”, she said, like she was really proud of having a full-size bike, “My parents gave it to me for my birthday in February.” I mean she WAS taller than I was and was now thirteen.

Then she said, “I didn’t invite you to my party because it was all girls, and I figured you wouldn’t like it.” I nodded, like that made sense. Myrna was probably there at her party so I probably WOULDN’T have liked it. I mean I liked girls, and I didn’t want to be uncomfortable around them or have girls think that I was, but I did better when I talked to them one at a time. I did think it was interesting that Abby’s birthday was the same month as Molly’s, who was ALSO taller than I was.

Then I saw Myrna, of all people, and Beth, on bicycles riding down Wells and turning onto our street. They saw Abby and rode up into our driveway.

“Sorry”, Abby said to mom and me, “I gotta go.” She turned and headed back toward the other two girls.

Mom nodded and pushed her lips together in a sort of a smile. She kind of groaned as she got to her feet, then walked over to where Myrna and Beth were, still on their bicycles. I knew she was going to talk to them though I wished she wouldn’t, but how was I going to stop her. Mom just liked talking to everybody, it was embarrassing sometimes.

Mom looked at Myrna and Beth, put her hands on her sides with her elbows out and said, “You know I’ve seen you two probably a hundred times since we moved here but I still don’t know your names.” That was pretty embarrassing.

Then she put one hand on her chest and said, “I’m Jane. Coop’s mom.” I looked up at the sky hoping the girls would see that I didn’t approve of what my mom was doing.

“I know you”, Myrna said, “Mrs Zale. My mom knows you from PTA and Board of Education meetings. I’m Myrna. My mom’s Mrs Brady. She talks about you and likes what you say at meetings.”

“Edna Brady?” mom asked. Myrna nodded and mom said, “Tell her Jane Zale says hi.” Myrna nodded and pointed at Beth.

“She’s Beth”, she said, “Her mom’s Mrs Westman.” Mom, now looking at Beth, nodded slowly.

“I think I met your mom briefly at the ice cream social last year in the park”, mom said, wagging her finger, “But I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to her. All the same… tell her Coop’s mom says hello.” Beth smiled like that was what you were supposed to do talking to a grownup and nodded.

“We gotta go”, Beth said to Myrna, and I could tell she was uncomfortable talking to mom. I hoped she and the other two girls didn’t think I was like my mom, but was glad they were going to go soon.

“Yeah”, said Myrna, nodding, “Nice to meet you Mrs Zale…”

“Jane”, mom said, interrupting her.

“Jane”, Myrna said, still nodding but looking a bit worried, then looking at Abby, “Abby you’re coming too, right?” Abby nodded, jumped on her bike, and the three of them rode out into the street up to Wells and then left and out of sight.

Mom looked at me and opened her eyes wide for a second and said, “Myrna’s mom is QUITE the character!”

I guess Myrna had a mom like my mom. And maybe MYRNA was quite the character too.

***

I was back up in my room playing my new “Jutland” game on the floor and mom knocked on my room door even though it was open. She peeked in and told me that she had washed all the window screens and would need my help bringing them all in from the front yard and putting them up in all the windows, but right now she was going for a walk. I nodded, but kept playing my game.

A little bit after that I started to get hungry and decided I’d go down to the kitchen to make myself some lunch. When I stood up I noticed what felt and smelled like cool outside air coming in the open doorway into my room. Even though it felt cool, it felt GOOD, and there were little goosebumps on my arms, like I got when I heard a song I REALLY liked. As I walked down the hallway, down the stairs and into the kitchen I realized that mom had opened all the windows in the house, except for the one in my room.

Mom LOVED fresh air. Sometimes even in the winter when the heater was on, she would open a window in her room at least a bit at night, because she said the fresh air, even cold fresh air, helped her fall asleep. No one else was in the house. Mom must have still been on her walk and David was probably still at Eddie’s house, or they were out riding THEIR bicycles or out in the park.

As I made and ate a ham and cheese sandwich, I realized that I wanted to go outside. It felt more like I HAD to go outside, so I quickly finished my sandwich and went, in my bluejeans with just a t-shirt on. When the warm sun hit me, out in the front yard, it just felt AMAZING. I looked around and all the remaining little piles of wet dirty snow had just about disappeard into pools of water and wet grass.

I looked out in the park and it was the same, all green and wet and just about no more snow. I also saw lots of kids in the park, my age, younger and older. There were boys playing soccer, like lunchtime on a regular school day. Other boys were standing around the backstop fence of the baseball diamond closest to our house. Girls were on the swings, in the concrete tubes and just walking around in groups. Groups of boys and groups of girls on their bicycles went by on Wells Street between our house and the park. I could even see a couple places where older boys and girls were talking to EACH OTHER. It was like some sort of “calling all kids” giant meeting, or bunch of separate meetings, and I figured I should be there too.

I ran across Wells and onto the mushy wet grass of the park, and as I walked toward the baseball diamond I had to be careful to avoid the really muddy parts. I could make out Mike, Stuart, Frankie, Teddy, Billy, and Gill all standing right next to the tall backstop fence by home plate. Groups of younger boys were standing around them, many I recognized as fourth and fifth graders from our before school soccer games last year, I guess they were fifth and sixth graders now. I recognized Mason and Julian, both fifth graders last year, now sixth graders. I got close enough to hear them talking.

“Our fourth and fifth graders are pretty pitiful”, said Mason, who was probably the best soccer player among last year’s fifth graders we used to play against every day before school and at lunchtime. He’d scored on Mike any number of times.

“And with our ‘new Mike’ Julian in goal”, Mason said, pointing to big Julian next to him, “We are pretty unstoppable.” Julian smiled and Mike chuckled and nodded slowly with a big grin on his face. My other friends chuckled too. Mike was always the main person in any group he was part of, not because he wanted to be, but everyone else just expected him to somehow.

Billy, of all people, was the first one to see me approaching and called out in a long pretend low voice, “COOOOOP!” I wished it had been Mike or anybody else saying it, but it was better than nothing, and Jason and Julian nodded their heads like I was another one of the cool older kids like Mike and the rest of them. I put my hand up to wave and nodded my head, though feeling kind of shy too.

“Yeah”, said Julian laughing, “The fifth and fourth graders got a bunch of third graders to play too so they can try to overwhelm us like some zombie horde. Third graders aren’t supposed to play, but we let them because, as Mason says, the fourth and fifth graders are hopeless.”

“That’s right”, said Frankie, “That’s always been the rule!”

“Maybe so, but who says that has to STILL be the rule”, Mike said, sounding like he disagreed with Frankie, “You guys get to make up your own rules. You can choose to let the third graders play. The more the merrier. Makes total sense to me.” Jason and Julian, and everybody else, even Frankie, nodded.

“Hell”, Mike said, “You could decide to let the girls play”, like maybe that was a good idea too.

“Naw”, said Mason, “That would go way too far.” Julian laughed through his nose and shook his head. Mike pushed his lips together and made kind of a silly face and just looked at the two of them.

Julian looked at me and said, “Your little brother is David, right? He’s one of the third graders that plays. He’s okay.” I wondered if he was saying David was okay because he was pretty good, or just he was trying to be nice to me, me being an older kid.

We all talked about the major league baseball season coming up, how the Tigers got close last year but might be able to win the pennant this year, with all their great players like Al Kaline, Norm Cash and Willie Horton. And with strong starting pitchers like Denny McLain, Mickey Lolich and Earl Wilson, though not so much Joe Sparma, who always walked a lot of guys. It was interesting because my friends were starting to just say the last names of players and not their first names too, which is what most of the boys older than us did, like that was the cooler way to talk about them. Hearing them do it, I started doing it too.

We all agreed that we so wanted to start playing baseball out here in the park, and had figured that by spring break, we should be able to. But we also agreed that the dirt in the infield and the grass in the outfield in the park’s baseball diamonds was still too wet and muddy to play on, but maybe in another day or two, if it stayed warm and sunny, it would dry out enough and be okay.

It was great talking to a lot of my school friends out in the park like this, and including some younger kids still going to Burns Park, with no grownup teachers around telling us not to, or where we should go and what we should do. It had been a really long school year so far, and there was still the last quarter to go. Well, no longer really than any other school year I suppose, but it FELT way longer at Tappan.

My mind calculated how much time I had left til summer break. Four weeks in April, four in May,and just those last two in June. I so wished we were already there, but it WAS nice that winter was finally done and me and all my school friends could spend more time in the park together without teachers and other grownups around. That felt more like regular life. I mean last year, even though we had the same amount of school, at least all my friends and I played soccer together every morning before class and every lunchtime before afternoon class with no grownups around so we could just be ourselves, well at least us boys.

***

The next day, Wednesday, was even warmer and the snow was now completely gone and the dirt diamonds were still muddy but less so, and the grass in the outfield was still mushy but less so too than it was the day before. Over at the tennis courts they were dry enough that people could play, mostly grownups. And of course there were the kids playing soccer, like they had on Monday and Tuesday, and probably would do on Thursday and Friday, even though there was no school this week. There were bugs, birds chirping, and some trees starting to look a little bit green from those “new buds” that mom was always talking about.

Most of the same kids in my grade, a year younger, plus some a year or two older were out again with our gloves, bats and balls by the big backstop fence behind the plate, but the diamond was still kind of muddy and the outfield grass mushy like the soccer fields farther over in right field towards the school. It wasn’t til Thursday we finally decided to try to play, because it was supposed to rain Friday and everything would get muddy and mushy again.

***

That Sunday, April 2nd was my twelfth birthday. Just like last year, I decided I wouldn’t have a party, because Mike was still the only one of my school friends who knew that mom and dad were divorced and I didn’t want the others to come to my house and figure it out.

When I’d told mom a couple weeks ago that I didn’t want to have a party, she had suggested that she take David and I to dinner on my birthday Sunday wherever I wanted to go. I said I wanted to go to the Flaming Pit restaurant across from Arborland. When David found out he asked mom if dad was coming too, and she said no, she still couldn’t have dinner with him, but she had worked it out with him that he would take us out for a “birthday breakfast” that same day.

Dad had called me and asked where I wanted to go for my birthday breakfast. I had first thought maybe the Food and Drug, but that reminded me too much of back when they first got divorced. So I told him I wasn’t sure, and he’d suggested this place called the Village Bell, which was across the street from the University Towers building on the corner of Forest and South University. I’d gone by it many times either walking or on my bike, but I’d never been in there. But I said yes because I felt bad for dad that mom wouldn’t let him come to my birthday dinner, so I would have said yes to pretty much anything he suggested, except maybe the Food and Drug.

It was a cold morning on my birthday, but sunny, and at least not raining like yesterday. The Village Bell was a pretty cool place. The walls inside were all brick and had all these old pictures on the walls of Michigan sports guys. He showed me Tom Harmon, who dad said played halfback but also played on defense and was the kicker too, and was so good his last year that he won the “Heisman Trophy” as the best player in college football in 1940. Also Fielding Yost, who was a Michigan football coach whose nickname was “Point-a-minute” because his teams scored tons of points and almost never lost. And a picture of that crazy announcer guy, Bob Ufer, when he was a Michigan student and had his special shirt and shorts on for running track.

We sat in this big dark wood booth in the “Captain’s Room” which had lots of pictures on the brick walls of all the captains of the Michigan football team from each year before in the twentieth century. I glanced at some of the pictures as the guy that worked there took us into the room to our booth. They were kind of scary actually, especially the black and white ones, which I guess were the ones from a long time ago. They stared out from the brick wall, looking serious and even worried, like they were trapped in there, some looking like they were trying to figure out how to get out.

But our booth DID feel like a really cool secret hideout with a window looking out at the super tall University Towers across the street. It was kind of that same cozy feeling I remember from our roomette on that train we took to my grandparents house when I was three. David and I had scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. Dad had that too, except he had sausage instead of bacon.

Dad asked me what it felt like to be twelve years old, like I should like it being older now. I mean I DID like being older, not being a little kid anymore like David still was, but it was weird because, now that I was older I was in junior high, which seemed much worse than elementary school had been when I was younger. But I couldn’t tell dad that I felt that way because he liked school so much.

So I just said, “It’s pretty cool”, which was true, at least when I was over in the park talking with younger kids who weren’t twelve yet. At Tappan, with my school friends all turning thirteen, which made them teenagers, turning twelve was BAD even, I didn’t want any of my friends to know how old I was. Mike knew, and Abby probably knew, but they weren’t like my regular friends who I worried might tease me about being a year younger than they were, or think I wasn’t really one of them. I guess that was also another reason why I didn’t want to have birthday parties.

After we finished our regular food, the guy who brought us our food and a couple other guys that worked there came to our table and gave me a big piece of chocolate cake with a lit candle in it and three forks and sang happy birthday. It was pretty embarrassing, but dad liked it and even sang along doing harmonies. I could tell dad was trying to be happy, though I wasn’t sure he really was.

And then that evening mom took David and I for a “birthday dinner” at the Flaming Pit, way out Washtenaw across the street from Arborland. I got the beef kabob with the hunks of steak stuck on that metal stick between small round tomatoes, and chunks of onion and green peppers. David, still a little kid, got the hamburger and fries, even though mom tried to convince him to get something “special”, that is, more grown up. Mom got broiled scallops and a baked potato.

Also as an appetiser, mom got us a shrimp cocktail to share, because she really liked the chilled shrimp dipped in cocktail sauce, and I was starting to like it too, and these were the “jumbo” shrimp too. David didn’t want any shrimp, cuz he thought it was yucky. Mom said, “More for Coop and me”, like she always liked to say when we didn’t like something she had made for dinner or bought at a restaurant.

Mom ALSO asked me how it felt to be twelve, and I had the same problem answering when she asked as when dad had. Except worse with mom because she could usually figure out that I was worrying about stuff, like back on Valentine’s Day when she figured out I was worried about something so I told her about not getting Rose a valentine. So I had to figure something I could say to her that was at least kind of how I felt.

So I said, “Twelve is okay I guess, but thirteen is the really big age, being a teenager.”

“Yeah”, she said, nodding, sighing, and looking like she was thinking about something that didn’t have to do with me, “You’ll get there soon enough, Coolie.” Then she started talking about other stuff and I was so relieved that she hadn’t figured out about how I was worried about only being twelve while my friends were turning thirteen.

I mean when I told her about how I really felt about not getting Rose a valentine back on Valentine’s day when she came up in the attic, she actually helped me fix that. But this feeling about being younger than all my friends was way more complicated and she couldn’t fix THAT, besides David was there too, and I didn’t want him to know about that stuff I was feeling cuz I was his big brother.

When we got back from dinner mom gave me my birthday present. It was in a wrapped box with a tag that said “From Mom and Dad”. It was one of those Polaroid Swinger cameras, where you could take a picture and it would develop in fifteen seconds. It was pretty cool, and mom took a picture of David and I to see how it worked. I tried to take a picture of her but she didn’t want me to.

“I’m not ready to have my picture taken right now”, she said, holding her hands up in front of her face.

But she did tell me that it was important that I call dad right away and tell him I liked my present, so he felt included in my birthday. That made sense, and I didn’t want him to feel bad, so I called him. I told him thanks for the camera, and I also decided to tell him thanks for buying me and David breakfast at that cool restaurant.

He said, “Oh Coop, I’m SO happy you called. Happy birthday young man!” And then he said, “I’m so honored to be your dad.”