Knotty Pines

When I was a child my bedroom was just off the main living area of our house.  I was required to go to bed promptly at 8 PM every night.  In the warmer California months this was pure torture because the sun often doesn't set until after 9 PM.  My father was one of those 'early to bed, early to rise' adherents, only his adherence came in the form of the 'do as I say, not as I do' mentality.  So, I'd often lay in bed, on the top bunk of my bunkbed, staring up at the ceiling.

In the outer room, my mother and father would sit, often with the television blaring, cigarettes blazing.  So, even if I wanted to sleep it was impossible to do so until at least 10 PM.  

I'm remembering the ceiling of my bedroom now.  It was covered with a series of knotty pine panels.  I would often stare at these knots.  Having spent so many sleepless nights staring at them, the knots eventually became faces, and I named some of them.  There was Charlie the clown, Delia the cat, and I even remember there was Ursula the witch.  So bored was I by this mandatory curfew in those early years I developed whole story lines involving the knots on those panels.  I referred to all of the characters as my knotty pines.

My father was a heavy smoker.  He and my mother smoked Pall Mall Red cigarettes.  These were of the unfiltered type.  While he chain smoked one cigarette after another, my mother would casually smoke maybe one cigarette in the evening.  I'm convinced that, for her, smoking was more of a social activity.  She stopped smoking for good in 1986 and never picked up another cigarette again.

In the evenings, the cigarette smoke from the living room would wend its way into my room.

Another of my father's requirements was that I couldn't close my bedroom door.  I had to leave it cracked open.  My father insisted this was for security.  For me, it was a convenient way to add mystery to my knotty pine family.  The cigarette smoke would swirl into the room, playing on the steady stream of light through the door, set slightly ajar.

As the light and smoke swirled around the knotty pines, I noticed other things.  I noticed that the wood paneling had a slight crystalline sheen to it.  I learned years later that the subtle crystalline sheen on the wood was actually nicotine accumulations from the cigarette smoke.  For me, as a child, the crystalline sheen and the smoke merely added to the excitement and adventure of the knotty pines. And there were other characters who lived out there lives on those knotty panels.  I remember a large spider who seemed unaffected by the swirling smoke.  I named her Charlotte, like the character in the beloved children's novel. She would occasionally receive permanent visits from houseflies.

I have always been fascinated by the minutia of life.  It was during the years of my evening solitude that I developed an appreciation for the ordinary, for the forgotten.  The knotty pine patterns in the ceiling of my bedroom stayed with me throughout the day when I would spend lots of time in the surrounding hills and woods, seeking out gnarly trees.  I learned that it was the gnarled trees that had the most knots when lumbered.  I imagined the gnarled giants of the woods carried a heavy burden in their knots.  

From the knots in wood, I turned my attention to the life in miniature that played out beneath my feet.  One of my favorite past-times was to lay out in one of the meadows, especially in the late spring, often on my belly.  I would turn my attention to the tiny flowers, plants, and bugs that inhabited the space where the meadow grass met the earth.

I have always loved the beautiful things that most people do not notice.

In this moment as I conclude todays journal entry, I am looking around the cavernous space of the upstairs loft in my house.  The ceiling that frames the large greenhouse window is entirely constructed of pine panels, eastern white pine to be exact.  And there are plenty of knots.

New friends.