nellreeder

Summer evenings were Nell’s favorite time of all.  The humid Maryland heat would begin to cool off in late evening about the time twilight came. The breezes would start up and she could watch the leaves in the white birch tree move. She could sit on her front steps and watch the fireflies flitting around in the field across the road. There always seemed to be a million over there. Every time she tried to catch them in her yard, they seemed to fly on over the farm across the road. It was never worth going over there to look for them. She would have had to walk up the road to the entrance and then cut back. The farmer had sold out to development so he had let the field go wild. The weeds were up to her waist. Besides, she would have had to put some shoes on to go over there. Nell made a point of wearing shoes as little as possible especially in the summer. She made to a point of walking across her gravel driveway in order to build up her feet as much as possible.

When she sat and watched the fireflies, she could dream she was anywhere and anything not some little fat girl who couldn’t tan. She was no longer the klutz who was the last one chosen for a game. She wasn’t the easy out in baseball; she wasn’t the one who had to always turn the jump rope. She was something.

I was not one of those popular girls growing up. I was quiet, shy, and chubby. I grew up in a house of thin, athletic people. My sister won the President’s fitness award three years in a row and I failed every test.

My favorite place was in Satuit, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. It was owned by Jerome Westabrook. No matter that it wasn’t a real place; I would go to my room and read one of my many copies of the Maida books. Maida had several friends and they all lived with her at her Little House on Cape Cod.  They had tutors who were friends and they were known as the Big Eight.

The house was 200 years old and had a small flagstone walk going up to it. It had roses on the trellis around the front door. Inside there was two small rooms. One was a map room and the other a library. Beyond that were a large living room with a fireplace you could walk into and a dining room with a wall of windows.

Beyond that was a tree growing up through a walkway from the house to the barn. If you climbed the tree you could see Massachusetts Bay and beyond that Maida’s father owned an island. I could see all the way to the island because the ocean was always blue and it was always clear.

I would become part of that group. We would be the Big Nine. Every girl seemed to have her own color that she would dress in. Rosie had red, Sylva yellow, Laura green, and Maida had my color blue. Rather than take that away, I would pick purple or lilac for my cape or hat or coat. The house only had four bedrooms in the main house so I wasn’t sure whether I would have to share with Maida or use of rooms in the new ell and have my own room. Maida was always generous so I was sure that she would share her room. I couldn’t re-write the house in my mind and add a fifth room in the house because that wouldn’t be fair.

I would swim in the pond. It had a raft in the middle of it and I am a good swimmer so I was sure I’d fit in. The pond was large and I had to walk through the woods and past a cleared circle that once had an ice house.

It was a wonderful place – everyone was nice and encouraging. No one thought that I was a loser. I could have stepped in those books and lived there forever. The tutors taught us daily and there weren’t any bullies waiting to make fun of me at the lockers.

It was a wonderful place and I visited it many times when I was growing up. It helped me get past some difficult times.

I went past some bushes today and they smelled just like some bushes I used to smell at Rehobeth Beach. My family and I used to go there when I was a little girl and that smell always meant that I was at the beach. It was a heavy, sweet smell made more so by the humidity. We were never ocean front – always a cottage or rooms back several streets. I would walk to the beach and smell those bushes and then smell the salt air on the beach itself. That fragrance takes me back years to the beach.