Ruthie Grace Lightnin Rose Lahti

CALLING CARD.

I decided that leaving too many options open can cause boundaries to blur. Therefore, when I arrived here in this town and recognized the light, I closed ranks; this is mine and only mine to determine.

No more roommates. And only those with emotional maturity, intellectual curiosity and manners are allowed through my door.

Lodging

My earless memories contain deep connections to nature, to being outside. I ate grass, chewed stems and rubbed dirt between my fingers. I squatted down to study spiders. I loved the spicy colors of the Portulaca growing in the median of my grandparents' driveway but I worried how they always looked spindly and half-parched when the 103 degree Pasco sun glared. That I was out there in that hot summer sun is itself a marvel. Though I do remember being busted many times, I was obviously determined to escape outside unchaperoned fairly regularly. My mother has relayed repeatedly the story of when I first ran away at eighteen months, by using a dresser's drawers as stairs, dropping out the window and disappearing into a cornfield. That's where the story ends by the way, always. She will respond blankly if pressed, such as well how the hell did you find me and how long was I gone. I can only imagine.

Moving to the lush valley of Portland from the barren plains of central Washington ignited my senses. I was five. Everywhere I looked was something fantastic - tall evergreens (whose needles could be rubbed but not chewed), glorious gardens, parks with all sorts of equipment, a big mountain, sidewalks and driveways for bike riding and everywhere vast green lawns with sparkly sprinklers.

Our very tiny rental house had a gigantic yard, double driveway and garage. In the garage lived an upright piano, two guinea pigs and a cold, clean concrete floor for resting and cooling off after playing hard. Our house was in the Glenhaven district of Portland's east side, a block from 82nd boulevard, a four lane mega-avenue, on Hancock street just south of the Banfield freeway. The grit and the noise was pure and constant excitement. It never stopped. It made me feel like life was always just right over there. But it stunk and brakes squealed and kids got hit and it flooded and crossing it to get to school required stopping all the traffic by slamming the crosswalk button.

My first place of my own was the unfinished loft of a detached garage facing the alley off 23rd and Northeast Ainsworth in Portland. Now called the Concordia district for the Lutheran high school I attended, the neighborhood was segregated. We didn't much cross 15th Avenue. The man who parked in the garage each evening was the father of my boyfriend. His timing was precise and he left and returned predictably, the engine of his new Mark IV shaking the walls and filling the space with exhaust.

Getting to the loft required scaling the wall using boards nailed as footholds. Then, one had to crawl across a beam before reaching the plywood flooring that been laid across the joists. Sleeping bags, ashtrays, a flashlight ... I was fifteen, nearing the end of my sophomore year. My sneaking suspicions had recently begun in earnest.

I continued climbing makeshift ladders for two more years - couches in the living rooms of revolutionaries, on the floor of dens and basements, returning home, leaving again. Summer school, night school, halfway through my junior year I dropped out completely and enrolled in my public high school for classes needed to graduate. I sold clothes in shops, stuffed envelopes, sold insurance for the boyfriend's father at his office on the corner of west 14th and Burnside.

To be continued ...