On Sunday afternoons when I was small. my father would take my brother Gary bowling. Mom would fall asleep on the couch with the newspaper in her lap -- her head tilting back unnaturally, mouth open and snoring -- and I would lie on the floor in the patch of sun that blared through the picture window as the sun moved down across the sky. Sometimes I read the funny papers, sometimes I found an old movie on TV, but the day I’m thinking about right now, as I lie here like my 8 year old self – curled with my knees to my chest, one arm crooked under my head, I held a dog-eared copy of A Field Guide to Birds against the hardwood floor, a pen hovering over a notebook in the other.
It was a nickel tablet my mother had bought me at the grocery store. I had been meticulously taking notes from the "birds of prey" section, writing down all the facts I thought were important. The sun felt warm against my back and I was fighting the urge to doze off. My face had fallen closer and closer to the book as I drowsed, putting me nose to beak with a sharp-shinned hawk. I was letting my eyes go in and out of focus and contemplating the way the light glared off the shiny pages when the doorbell rang, which had never happened on a Sunday afternoon before. Startled, I jumped and whacked my head on the edge of the coffee table. My mother snorted.“Look out, Rubes,” she said as she heaved herself noisily to her feet. The doorbell rang again. “And get the damn door, wouldja?”“Mo-om!” I protested, “I’m reading!”
With a frustrated sigh she sent the newspaper fluttering all over me. “For crying out loud, Ruby,” she said as she stomped to the door. The door opened and I heard somebody speak, then everything went quiet. Totally quiet.
Barely breathing, I peaked under the coffee table. I remember feeling like a spy h by Lonely Acrobat
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