Denim and Lace, Hair Ribbons and Squirrels

Beneath and out of view from the kitchen window, my daddy had made me a sandbox. Here I built sloppy and unrecognizable castles, made mud pies, played with tiny toy soldiers in makeshift forts. I was anything but my mother's expectation of a well behaved, frilly little girl child, opting for cotton and denim rather than lace, preferring Cowboys and Indians to playing house, and more at home in the maple tree than seated at the piano. My mother despaired - loudly and often - of my tomboyish ways, predicting dire consequences for a child who didn't know her place and refused to wear hair ribbons. We were at war even then and I was barely four.

I found the baby squirrel in the sandbox, a tiny thing huddled in a corner with huge eyes, shivering and burrowed into the sand. Knowing my mother would disapprove, I smuggled out a towel and wrapped it up then found a shoe box for a bed and quietly took it into the basement, made it a meal of Rice Krispies and milk and watched over it all afternoon, finally falling asleep in the abandoned old chair by the piano with the shoe box in my lap. I woke when I heard my daddy and raced upstairs to tell him what I had found - by then I had already picked out a name and imagined an entire family of middle class squirrels taking up residence in the basement, a veritable squirrel haven in my care. My daddy, a reasonable and gentle man but with more experience and foresight, worked out a delicate
compromise - Skippy could stay but he would have to be caged and eventually released into the wild, in this case, our back yard, and under no circumstances could he be brought upstairs. Your mother wouldn't take kindly to this, he told me and then after a moment's reconsideration, In fact, it might be better for everyone if she didn't know.

The secret squirrel spent that spring and summer in the basement and in the fall, sleek and relatively tame, my daddy and I released him. He scampered to the maple tree and climbed with squirrel ease,
explored the fence line and dashed in and out of the shrubs, happy, well fed and free. Can't ask for more than that, my daddy told me and hugged away my tears.

It may have been my very first experience with what we all know as mixed feelings. The side of me that knew the secret squirrel needed to live in the outside world and be a part of nature's cosmic plan, knew that he belonged to the wild, felt like celebrating this small liberation. The other side had lost a friend to an uncertain and possibly dangerous world of cats and cold, traffic and bb guns.

When the first snow came, I discovered a trail of nuts and breadcrumbs leading from the maple tree to a barely open basement window and the warmth and protection of a basket atop the furnace, a basket lined with old towels and new straw, a basket that sat far above where anyone would look. He never owned up to it, but it seemed my daddy knew a little something about mixed feelings too.