Sunny Lemon Tina

I stood with my foot covering the hoe, about to slice deep into the wet black earth when I heard a familiar sound chortling down the street. It was the ice cream truck, nearly the same as when I was a small girl. It was playing my song, Sunny Lemon Tina.

I remembered Saturday afternoons when I was three, when sunny, yellow warmth filled the apartment my father, mother and I lived in, when Mama stood ironing her cottons and singing Carmen.  My father was a graduate student at the university, and my mother worked part-time in a lab. Saturday was reserved for Mama and I.

I was home from nursery school with chicken pox and I blocked my ears against the opera I could not bear to hear, and I scratched my back against the door, trying to ease the itch. The music from the ice cream truck was my sole solace against the tiny, terrible boredom of a three-year-old girl home sick for two weeks. Time stood still.

As Mama ironed, her chestnut hair fell in gentle waves down her back, and, at 27, she looked to be the picture of a girl still in high school.  She had no inkling of the tragedy that would soon steal her soul, and as she ironed and starched her cotton blouses, she planned a perfect life for her future,  the accompaniment to the zeal she put forth in everything.

I begged Mama to sing Sunny Lemon Tina.

Frere Jacques
Frere Jacques
Dormez Vous?
Dormez Vous?
Sonner Les Matins
Sonner Les Matins
Din Dan Don
Din Dan Don.

Before I knew the words were French and before I understood their meaning, I understood Sunny Lemon Tina only as would any girl of three years old - who shook shook her Shirley Temple curls to make the world stand up and take notice of who she was;  Sunny Lemon Tina was a dream that returned every time I heard the song. She was every girl at three, she was me.

After Mama was done ironing, I would curl up in her lap, my head resting against her breast, nestled against the soft silk of her blue robe, while she stroked my hair and cooed, and I drowned happily in her love.  I was cradled in comfort and safety against outside influence, much as the Salt Lake Valley, surrounded by mountains on three sides, is cradled in comfort and safety against outside influence.  There is no view of any world beyond the mountainous horizon in the Salt Lake Valley.

I wished for no greater happiness than to be with Mama the rest of my days.

I did not know then what I would soon learn: that I would take care of her years before I should be required to do so -  the roles would reverse and I would protect her, even when I could not. I would pray that she come to no harm, and when harm did come time and again, I would cry, the floodgates released. I did not know then that Mama would become horribly ill with a mental illness, a disease that erased her soul and replaced it with a blank slate.

But as I basked in that warm Saturday afternoon when I was three, life was perfect.

The ice cream truck jolted me back from my remembrance of Mama.

As the ice cream truck played its morning bells and rolled to a stop down the street, I pushed my foot deeper into the hoe, ready to plant my spring bulbs, the Dutch tulips my mother and I so loved - tulips, which come spring, would break new ground and briefly quell the ache that returns when I remember Mama.

Children spilled onto the formerly silent street. They skipped to the truck, jangling their money and delighting in the momentary ice cream dream of finding Sunny Lemon Tina.

The world was perfect, once again.

Copyright © 2007, 2008,2009.Kathryn Esplin-Oleski. All rights reserved.

Reposted. Part of a series.