As I pushed and pushed, suddenly I had the sensation that the grass ahead of me was moving; slithering, even. I stopped and stared--and screamed! My poor Dad, dragging himself out of the dirt cellar, came to see what terrible beast was about to drag his daughter away. When he saw the tiny grass snake trying desperately to get away from this screaming apparition, he laughed, and then said, "You better get used to it; you'll be mowing this grass for many summers." I don't know what upset me most, the snake, his laughing at me, or the thought that I'd have to mow that grass for many summers.
We hadn't moved into this house, yet. It was my mother's dream house. It had been empty for several years, and used only as a summer place for many years before that. Situated on a curve on the country road a few miles before Irja and Pete's, we had passed it many times. It was a house of history, built in the late 1700's. As any house that had been neglected, there was a great deal of repairing to do. Not the least of which was putting in faucets where there was only a hand pump!
It was a little beauty of a Cape Cod double. The cany New Englanders who built it had placed it facing south, with an enormous boulder on its north side. This boulder, as high and almost as wide as the house itself, gave the place its local name; The Rock House. We owned the land across the road (a useless to us, but an important to the ecosystem, swamp), and 62 acres behind and on either side of us. It was a perfect playland for a dreamy 10-year-old girl.
My bedroom faced east, looking into the woods. It was in this bedroom, with the wasps in the summer and the mice in the winter, that I wrote my first novel, my only love letters to my handsome Irish/Portuguese boyfriend from "The Cape", cried over my first heartbreak, read every book I could get my hands on (including a couple I had to hide from my folks...the librarian let me check out anything I wanted from the library. My father DID find "Duel in the Sun" and was upset with me. I guess for its day it was not appropriate for a preteen. It seemed OK with me, which shows you that children understand in print only that with which they have intimate knowledge. I'm not so sure that holds up when it comes to TV.), and generally dreamed my life away.
The green grass snake was only the first of many "serpents" of which I made an acquaintance in The Rock House. I think the worst was that that slithered its way into my Mother's brain in those years, taking over her personality, and turning her into a scaly monster. There was a movie, "Snake Pit", with Olivia De Haviland, that dealt with mental illness. I never saw it, but heard a lot about it, and one of my recurring nightmares after Mom died was that I had killed her by pushing her into the snake pit.
Moving into her dream house only exacerbated her illness. She had another breakdown 6 weeks after we moved there. Whereas the one the summer before did not affect me (I was happily swimming in the creek at Irja's), this one was devastating to me. My Aunt A. came to stay with us so that Dad could keep on working. She was the most wonderful Aunt, but a lousy child care giver. She got hysterical over every little thing, and it was very wearing on me. And J., my 4 year old brother, had become a real pest. (Of course, I was perfect!)
However, getting back to snakes, after that traumatic first meeting with the little green grass snake, I learned not to be afraid. So when the two huge black snakes who lived in the crawl space under the house came out to sun themselves on the big flat rock in the driveway, on that warm autumn day, I was more curious than scared. My Aunt A., however, had a genuine case of the Victorian vapors, much to her brother's amusement. Her reaction made me feel just a wee bit superior to this wonderful lady, which didn't help her position as caregiver one bit.
I was paid back, royally, however, a few days later, when the dry well had forced us to use the old "backhouse". One dusky early evening, I skipped up the vine-covered path to do my duty, shoved open the door, and screamed my "green grass snake" scream. There was a skunk hiding behind the door. I never had run so fast, nor been so loud. And Dad thought this was just as hilarious as A.'s experience with the black snakes. Humpphh!