Corners

This morning, while riding the bus on my way to work, I had a sudden flashback of my childhood school.

It was a bluish-gray building, I'd say I remember it as a 'stern' shade of gray. The principal, Sister Gerome, always wore a black skirt and a white shirt, and on her head - a black cotton veil over a white skullcap.

The school building itself was symmetrical, but the yard was another matter. The building's wide entrance was secured only by a large black accordion gate which gave access to the lobby, and beyond the lobby, a central courtyard around which the classrooms were arranged in two tiers. The central courtyard was our main playground, but around the perimeter of the school was a narrow ribbon of yard, itself shielded by a tall fence from the sidewalk and the street beyond.

One of these peripheral segments was, inexplicably, a triangular shaped space. The apex of this more or less isosceles-shaped triangle was the least frequented spot in the entire school compound. Children would walk there with an air of trepidation, heightened by the fact that the apex was not closed, but open just enough for one child at a time to pass through to another segment of the periphery. Not only that, but the apex opened into a tiny rock garden with some low shrubs. So you'd have to navigate the narrow opening, step onto the gravel and squeeze past the shrubs. Its fair to say that the apex was planted like this to discourage us children from passing there.

The interesting thing about this morning's flashback is that it was built brick by brick from an instantaneous image of this little corner of the schoolyard. Its almost like I've folded and stored the entire memory of the school in the empty space that was the open apex of a triangular shaped piece of yard. First came the corner,
then the fences, the courtyard, then the lobby, Sister Gerome, and finally the facade of the school in that stern bluish gray.

I often wonder about my son's inner life. Just as I wasn't able (and indeed, never seriously wanted) to share my childhood perspective with my parents, I can't know how my son perceives his world, how he throws his net over the things he means to keep, which oddly shaped corners will suggest the whole, and which empty spaces are carrying entire segments of his universe.