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The Origins of a Story
by Jillian Smith The story begins: a little girl is sitting on a swing in her backyard. The back yard is on the side of a steep hill. Overhead the blue sky is dotted with one or two white clouds. The little girl looks into the blue expanse ahead of her, digs her toes into the ground and pushes off. She pumps her legs and soon is swinging. She pumps harder and harder and swings higher and higher. She is looking up at the sky, stretching out her toes to reach its blue, thinking about what it would be like to fly. Before she knows what has happened, the girl has lost her grip on the swings chains and has slipped off of the swing. She is falling through the air. She is frightened. She closes her eyes and waits to hit the ground. At 785 Fairlawn Avenue there is a small ranch house with three bedrooms, an eat-in kitchen and a living room. An average family fills this home with a cat, dog, a mother, a father and four daughters. The mother is the cook, cleaner, errand runner, chief childcare giver and homemaker. The father is the bread winner, student, storyteller. The story continues ... Chalky the Cloud is a little white puffball of a cloud. He has been watching the little girl on the swing and now swoops down to catch her before she hits the earth. Thinking she was going to fall hard on the ground, the little girl is surprised by this soft landing and even more surprised when a voice speaks to her. "Don't worry little girl, I caught you, you're safe. My name is Chalky the Cloud, what's yours?" Next Chalky offers to fly the little girl anywhere in the world and asks her what place she would most like to visit for the day. The little girl might pick the zoo, Paris, Disneyland... . The little girl decides on a destination and settles into the fluffy comfort of the little white cloud, looking at the scenery they fly over - whales surfacing on the Atlantic or hawks searching for prey over the Rocky mountains, or the elementary school she will go to at the end of the summer. When they arrive at their destination, Chalky flies low enough to put the little girl on the neck of the giraffe at the zoo, or on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower, or in the seat at the top of the ferris wheel... and Chalky tells the Beth or Jane or Sue that he will be back at the end of the day to take her home again. I am the youngest of the four daughters. My sisters and I are all grown up now. Our father, the story teller, passed away a couple of years ago. A few months after my father's passing, my husband and I adopted a black and white cat. My husband decided the cat would be called Chalky. By the time I was old enough to listen to the story of Chalky the Cloud, my sisters had heard it hundreds of times. It was a family classic, a father/daughter tradition. Whether my father had originally made the story up for my oldest sister or if he had told his nieces and nephews the story long before he and my mother met, I don't know. I never thought to ask. The story was an unquestioned part of my childhood, something I could always count on being there, like the father who was telling the story. Even as an adult, it never occurred to me to ask him the origin of the story or how he decided that the cloud would br dubbed "Chalky". I remember my father telling me the story of Chalky the Cloud many times when I was small. Sometimes as a bedtime story, sometimes in the quiet of an afternoon. I especially enjoyed answering Chalky's questions. "My name is Chalky the Cloud. What's yours?" "Lucy" "You almost had a nasty spill falling off the swing, Lucy. You're safe now. I caught you." Chalky was talking to me but he had my father's kind voice. "I can take you anywhere you would like to go for the afternoon, where would you like to go?" Most often I chose the zoo because it would be fun to slide down the giraffe's neck. Other times I probably picked the amusement park as the destination to have Chalky fly me to. |
A half mile up the road from 785 Fairlawn Ave. was a neighborhood playground. The playground was the place I would ask my father to take me in the evening or on a Saturday afternoon. We would walk up the street and hold hands as we crossed at the one intersection between home and the playground. I don't remember what we talked about but I do remember that it was special being with my dad. The playground was surrounded by a fence, inside the fence was the usual equipment - swings, slides, monkey bars and one rare item, a swinging gate. The swinging gate was just that - a gate hinged to a bar that could be spun around and around. It had a foothold at the bottom and a bar to hold onto and was no more than three feet high. I loved the swinging gate. It would always be my first stop at the playground and my dad would push me on it and push me on it and push me on it, until I'd had as much spinning as I could take. Looking back I think my father's arm must have gotten tired of pushing the gate, but I would always get on the gate to be spun by my father "one more time" before we left the playground to head back home. The summer before my dad turned 26 years old he traveled from New York City to California by bus. His vision was highly impaired, later to be called "legally blind" making travel challenging. Among other places the bus stopped in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Salt Lake City and San Francisco. From San Francisco he made his way to Southern California where he visited his younger brother who was stationed at a army base there. It was the first time my dad had traveled beyond Southern New England and New York City. "I can take you anywhere you would like to go," Chalky the Cloud offers in the story. My dad found work that summer, harvesting fruit and working in a tomato cannery. It was not pleasant work but he needed to earn money to pay for his trip back to the east coast. He did not earn enough to buy a ticket all the way home and had to ask family to wire him some funds. This would have been a very difficult thing for him to bring himself to do. "I'll pick you up at the end of the day to bring you home in time for dinner," Chalky always added for reassurance. The story concludes: After a full day at the zoo visiting all of the animals, or at the amusement park going on all of the rides from the Merry-go-round to the roller coaster the little girl hears a voice calling her name. "It's time to go home now Lucy, we don't want your mother to worry. Now you go back to the giraffe's cage and climb up the neck of the tallest giraffe and I'll be waiting at the top to fly you home." And the little girl meets Chalky at the top of the giraffe's neck, or on the observation deck of the Empire State building or in her seat when it reaches the top of the ferris wheel, and climbs onto his soft puff ball cloud back. Chalky transports the little girl safely back to her back yard and sets her back down on the swing she fell off of earlier, which is still swinging in the breeze. The girl thanks Chalky and says good-by just as her mother opens the back door to call her in for the evening. Chalky the cat learned his name very quickly and comes when you call him by it. My husband and I are reminded of his puffy white namesake every time we call Chalky the cat. And we are reminded of my father, the storyteller, who entertained his children and grandchildren with the story of a talking cloud. Chalky the Cloud transported my sisters and myself on countless adventures, taking us anywhere in the world that our hearts desired and always had us back home, safe and sound, in time for dinner. |
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