A Sea of Ice or Maybe a Boat

The setting for today’s story is Wichita, Kansas, on a January day in 1941. In three months, I would celebrate my fifth birthday and my brother—whom I’ll call Billy in this story—would turn two. On this particular cold winter day I took his hands in mine and said, “Let’s play Rescue!”

         Mom had no idea what that game entailed, so she gladly helped us into our snowsuits, galoshes, caps, and mittens. We traipsed outside to the backyard of the Victorian house in which we rented an apartment.

         In that backyard sat an abandoned cast-iron bathtub with a porcelain interior and claw feet. Inside the tub, from side to side and back to front, was a sea of solid, and yes, slippery, ice—about a foot thick.         

         “Billy you get into the tub and stand on the ice,” I commanded my brother. “You be a pirate. The bathtub’s a boat. I’ll be a little girl on an island. You rescue me.”

         I helped him climb up onto the bathtub and stand on the ice. He grinned widely. Retreating to the far end of the snowy yard, I shouted, “Help! Mr. Pirate! Please rescue me!”

         My little brother waved at me. “Billy help!”

         “Put your hand over your eyes and stare at the island,” I ordered, showing him what I meant. I demonstrated walking up and down and peering right and left and all around. He followed my actions, slipping just a little on the ice.

         “Now say, ‘Land Ahoy!’”

         “Land Ahoy!” he shouted. His pronunciation wasn’t on target but he could shout loud enough to suit me.

         “I’m here! Mr. Pirate! Rescue me!”

         He started to climb out of the tub, but I shouted, “No! Not yet. Walk on the ice some more. Like the boat is moving! And keep looking for me!” Once again I demonstrated.

         So he began to walk back and forth on the ice. Slipping. Sliding, Falling. “Ouch!” he shouted, trying to stand upright, but his feet kept sliding out from under him, so he fell on his bottom again and again.

         “Billy, get up,” I ordered. “You’ve got to rescue me!”

         Billy met my order with a loud wail: “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” 

         Before I could get him to stop crying, Mom came hurrying outside to investigate.

         You must know the rest: Mom lifting him out of the tub, singing his favorite song to him; Mom saying, “Anna Dolores Ready, you get in the house right now!” Mom following me as I tromped down the snowy path, tugged open the front door, trudged down the hall, and entered our apartment.

         “Why?” she asked me after we’d taken off our snowsuits. “Why did you do that to your little brother?”

         “Cause he’s a good pirate. And the tub is a boat.”

         “And the ice?”

         “The sea.”

         “Your brother could have fallen and hit his head and been hurt,” she told me.

         “But he’s got a hard head. You said so yesterday.”

         “Ice is pretty hard too and it can crack a head open.”

         This was a new thought to me: a cracked-open  head. Interesting.

         “So what do you say to your little brother?”

         I looked at Billy who was smiling at me. Every time we went to the store, women stopped my mother and said, “What a beautiful little boy!” I was always proud of his golden curls and deep blue eyes and infectious grin.

         “I’m sorry, Billy,” I said. “Let’s play another game. An inside one.”
         So it was that the afternoon ended with Mom setting up the card table and throwing a blanket over it and the three of us sitting in our homemade tent and having a tea party. Much different from being rescued by a pirate. But satisfying nonetheless.

Postscript: During the first few years of my life I was what my grandmother called, “a naughty little girl.” If you have time, click here for a story about my running away when I was about three.  Click here for my lighting a campfire in the apartment hall a month or so later.

Both photographs from Wikipedia.