That Freshly Waxed Floor

It was the doctor’s office that put me in a nostalgic mood this morning.

I noticed the smell as soon as I walked into the examining room.

It was the smell of a freshly waxed floor.

It made me smile.

As soon as I was alone, I texted a friend of mine, “They have freshly waxed the floors at the doctor’s office.  It reminds me of the first day of school.”

Though not of my first days as a student, but rather my first days as a teacher, those days before the first day, the planning days, the cleaning and decorating of the classroom days, the putting up of bulletin boards.  And if I couldn’t contain my excitement over being back to work and I got to the school a week or so before we were due to report, then I had to maneuver around those freshly waxed floors, lest I incur the wrath of our custodian, Pat, who always seemed to know if I had put a toe on her floor.

“Do not walk there!” she’d yell from somewhere on the other side of the school, unseen.

My good mood stayed with me, as I left the doctor’s office and made my way first to Gleason Park to snap pictures of ibises in flamingo poses and seagulls lounging on the dirtiest and filthiest railings, eyes half-shut, not awake yet to the day, or perhaps simply waiting on “second breakfast” or “elevenses.”

Later, at the Wetlands, I discovered that the Great Blue Heron nest I had been watching had three babies, not two.  Where had that third baby been hiding?  All three seemed more lively and larger than ever.

And just as I pulled out of the Wetlands, I caught a glimpse of the largest alligator I have ever seen, easily as long as my car, fifteen feet at least, and thankfully tucked far away from the road on its own island.

At home, nostalgia returned.

I was dusting—yes, I dust, and I spent some time over the small roll-top desk I’ve had ever since I was a kid. 

It was my grandmother’s desk first and she insists the crayon marks on the drawers are her doodles.

“I didn’t think they had crayons back then,” I told her once, which earned me an epic side-eye and the conversation came to an abrupt end.

I wrote my first stories on that desk.

But the reason why I will never give that desk up has more to do with the tiny, pinpricks of paint splatter on the desk.

Those are there courtesy of my mom.  I’m not sure how they got there.

But she was the painter.

She was the artist and at some point, she was painting near my desk.

The paint is now a memory of her, an accident, but a legacy.

This desk was used and present for wild, unrestrained, bouts of Willy Wonka-type pure imagination, as represented by paint splatters, crayon doodles, and the specks of dust stirred, as I gripped that pencil tight in my hand and created my first worlds.

In every way, then, that desk represents home.