Hiding

Once I hid in the hallway closet and waited for my absence to be noted. I crouched there listening to the rise and fall of voices and assorted household sounds until I began to feel oddly disconnected from all of the muffled commotions. The familiar world outside grew strange, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the forms of brooms and jackets seemed comforting. The closet was my habitat. I nodded off. When the door abruptly opened, I was like an alien creature suddenly cornered and exposed. My inexplicable presence gave quite a fright to the opener of the door, of course, and there was reproach instead of welcome. But I only wanted someone to have missed me.

Another time, I hid out of boredom -- or maybe it was spite. I need to backtrack a bit to explain it: I had gone with my mother to a resort in the Catskill Mountains, a region we referred to as “the country”. This annual expedition occurred in the summers of my childhood for a period of several years; I was not at all fond of it and wished I didn’t always have to be my mother’s escort. We would say good-bye to my father at the Port Authority, take Trailways to Kingston where we ate sandwiches on the bus while it sat parked for a time, and then go on to Ellenville or Palenville or some other small upstate town. It was a long ride and evoked the feeling not of vacation but exile.

When we arrived, someone from the hotel would pick us up at the bus stop (which might be just a little general store or filling station) and take us to a large old wooden house with a front porch and smelly guest rooms. There was a structure nearby for parties and dancing that was glamorously referred to as the casino, a cluster of small separate bungalows, and a dining hall to which we were summoned by the clanging of a bell. I remember the most peculiar details, such as the fact that the milk was served in icy bottles with cream at the top, and there were rusty metal lawn chairs that tipped over easily, and the rooms we stayed in had big empty dressers and lumpy mattresses.

Occasionally I found a friend my age in the country, and I tried to make the best of things, but in truth I felt sad and strange the whole time I was there. One afternoon while my mother was napping I stared into the murky dresser mirror, entranced by the fine lines of scratches in its silvery surface, and by my own shadowy face within, like looking into a well. Then I impetuously cut my hair, adding brand new wispy bangs for a needed change of mood. My mother took one horrified look and yelled at me so long that Marcella, the owner’s daughter, came upstairs and knocked at the door to see if I was okay. She came bearing gifts, too – a clear plastic purse with a Three Musketeers bar inside. (That, and her obvious sympathy, made the ordeal almost worthwhile. My sobbing ceased with a mouthful of chocolate.)

Now you have a sense, though, of the context in which my ultimate hiding caper occurred. I don’t recall if I planned it deliberately or if it was just another of my whims, but I wandered into the front room of the big house and sat behind a plump armchair, my legs stretched out before me underneath the chair, and I stayed there for what felt like hours. I listened to my mother’s initial inquiries about my whereabouts, then observed how her voice rose gradually into tones of worry, alarm, and even panic. I thought this was between the two of us somehow, but suddenly others were being solicited to help hunt for me, and my name was on everyone’s lips. Finally some eagle-eyed guest spotted my saddle shoes beneath the chair. Once again I was greeted with reprimand, well deserved.

I was a mother myself before I fully understood the cruelty of this hiding business. I’m sure that every parent knows those moments of panic when you lose of sight of your child for an instant in a department store, for example, or some other potentially perilous place. As a four-year-old, my own daughter and her friend Seychelle decided to hide under the bed in our house when Seychelle’s mother Sonja came to pick her up. We lived in a place about as safe and idyllic as one could imagine, a trailer park on the north end of Laguna Beach, but suddenly I had visions of predators driving through the rows ready to pull little girls into their cars.

Sonja and I scanned the street, calling their names again and again, our irrational anxiety mounting. The girls seemed to be missing for a long time, though perhaps it was only ten minutes or so. And when the little duo emerged sheepishly from the bedroom, it was my daughter who explained: “We were afraid to come out. The more worried you sounded, the madder you were going to be, and the scared-er we got. But then we started to be afraid of how long we were going to have to stay under there."

"We were getting hungry too,” added Seychelle.

It sounds funny now. Even back then, it didn't take too long for us to laugh. Maybe my daughter remembers it differently.

But all of this is ancient history. In my life today, hiding takes on a different meaning. It is the peculiar freedom of being no longer young, of living in a place that remembers its wildness, of accepting the fluidity of things. While memory fills me up, time is also dissolving me. I am small and plain and close to the ground. I am learning to disappear, and it isn't in the hopes of being found.