twosmallmonsters

When I think of Alex I think of bare feet, brown overalls with loose threads dangling from the cuffs, the impossibility of catching and cradling a bubble, and a meadow that used to exist next to our first house on Julian Street. The memory of Alex smells like a fresh mowed lawn or the morning after a driveway has been tarred. It feels like a slobbery, wet tree branch that the dog brings to us, pleading us to throw her branch back into the field for her.

There is a specific afternoon that I pull from the file in my brain every once in a while. Alex is seven and I am five years old. We are leaping and bounding across the front yard. We emerge from tall weeds and grass onto the driveway where our favorite baby sitter blows bubbles at us. We jump to touch them and they inevitably break at our fingertips. There is suddenly a rumbling noise. It is louder than a vacuum cleaner and the driveway shakes under our feet. Neither Alex nor the babysitter seems to notice the noise as it draws closer. They continue to surround us in sudsy spheres that reflect a tiny rainbow when a sun ray catches it just right.

I plug my ears and fear a plane is about to crash into the meadow. We have seen the aftermath of an airplane crash in the back of Danny's house in the woods where his tree house sits. I see that the sound is not coming from the air but the road. A pack of thirty motorcycles are driving through town. The drivers are all wearing black leather and their chins are furrier than some animals. The babysitter continues to blow bubbles and Alex dances around, popping as many bubbles as she can as she spins.

“Bubbles!” a Hell's Angel look-a-like shouts affectionately. I hear this just barely above the roar. Suddenly all the bikers are cooing about the bubbles and Alex picks up another bottle of bubbles and blows them into the street. Black leather gloved hands reach up to grab the bubbles. The laughter that fills the street is gentle and they continue cooing the word “bubbles”, even after the parade has passed the breathless Alex.