{"id":170,"date":"2021-04-02T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-02T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/magicmasterminds.com\/DonnaDVitucci\/?p=170"},"modified":"2021-04-18T19:41:35","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T00:41:35","slug":"commonplace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magicmasterminds.com\/DonnaDVitucci\/stories\/commonplace\/","title":{"rendered":"Commonplace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A memoir, \"Commonplace<\/strong>\" appears in the most recent issue of\u00a0Red Coyote, Volume 34<\/a><\/strong>, 2019-20,\u00a0published by the University of South Dakota and The Vermillion Project.<\/p>\n

Commonplace<\/h2>\n

We were raised in rural America, or what we thought was rural. Not Iowa, Illinois or Nebraska, not even amid the cornfields\u00a0of our own\u00a0Ohio, rather on the outskirts, in a\u00a0township. Our mailing address was Cincinnati, though we were far from any\u00a0downtown. Our mailman\u00a0drove a putt-putt three-legged truck; no one could have walked the length and breadth of our\u00a0neighborhood. Delivery required wheels\u00a0of them all: Mailman, Milkman, Fuller Brush Man.<\/p>\n

Boomer Road<\/h4>\n

Come to the long road of your childhood, where part of it contained a whip-curve that too many cars took too fast. Then the\u00a0machines\u00a0left the road to find a ditch or a front yard. Another segment dipped into a ravine with sheep held to the right, and at your\u00a0left, a rickety\u00a0house you declared haunted. Two story once-white colonial with the front grillwork for porch columns faded to a dark\u00a0bluish kind of\u00a0iron. The windows, the proverbial eye sockets, the roof mossy and leaf-strewn. The trees growing alongside were\u00a0massive and\u00a0protecting. You wouldn\u2019t venture there. Your hikes never stopped there.\u2028 Instead the sheep drew you to their wooly heads and you petted them through the bendy wire fence. The smell of trapped\u00a0rain rose\u00a0from their backs.<\/p>\n

They were white but they appeared gray, or even brown. They were filthy and you adored them because\u00a0they did not\u00a0run from your grabby hands. You had always wanted pets but were never allowed because you were renters.<\/p>\n

No pets\u00a0could abide the\u00a0top floor called your house, with four small rooms plus a closet-sized bath. The no pet rule was laid out flat by your\u00a0mother.\u2028You could question Dorothy and cajole her and ask ten thousand times why.<\/p>\n

You could beg, demand, fall into a fit of tears\u00a0that lasted so\u00a0many hours you forgot what you were crying over. You were crying for crying. That\u2019s from where came the saying,\u00a0for crying\u2019s sake,\u00a0right? One of the world\u2019s riddles cracked open for you then, some small bit of meaning made clear, and you\u00a0cherished it inside the little\u00a0cabinet of your heart. Where you put things you\u2019d never forget.<\/p>\n

Like that treacherous curve in the road.\u00a0Like the once-gloried mansion.\u00a0Like Dorothy\u2019s scolding and threats that sound now so much like affectionate bird song. You loved\u00a0birds then, same as you love them\u00a0today. They perch on pedestals in the cabinet of your heart, beside Dorothy. They sing to her in\u00a0the morning\u2019s dark and early hours,\u00a0when you inevitably wake and can\u2019t sleep, your eyes salty-tired and your arms achy from lifting\u00a0a treacherous road, from straining\u00a0toward Dorothy, with Dorothy.<\/p>\n

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