by Pam Clements
I’ve been told that one of my early words was “condensation.” This was cited by my mother as a sign of precociousness, but I think it was just a result of the way my parents talked to me from birth, a first child of two teachers. I imagine Dad carrying me between the old farmhouse kitchen and the “back room,” our mud room containing the washing machine, a row of hooks for coats, and a door opening onto the back yard. Perambulating back to the kitchen, talking all the time, describing things to me while chatting with my mother, who would have been cooking a modest Buffalo winter dinner.
The kitchen had been renovated (for the first of several times) by my parents. I have a vague memory of olive green linoleum being scraped off the floor, to be replaced by new linoleum in then-fashionable red, white and black tiles. I was only two when they bought the house, so that’s a very early memory, possibly even a false one. (I have lots of those, and a good imagination.) Tall cabinets were painted off-white, and my folks covered the countertops with red linoleum that matched the top of a kitchen table. They replaced an old cast-iron sink, and took out a pump that had once brought in water from a well under the driveway. The Norge refrigerator was no taller than my 5-foot-6 father; its rounded edges a reminder of its art deco origins. Red, white and black cotton curtains fluttered at the windows and the side door.
The door to the back yard was uncurtained, and remained so for the 42 years my parents resided there. I imagine it was this window that Dad held me up to one winter evening, for the first time uttering “condensation.” He would have traced a line in the window’s fog, and maybe pushed my toddler finger against the glass to make a similar mark. He would have then explained, despite my age, that warm moisture in the kitchen air had “condensed,” or collected, on the cold window to create that grayish fog. What optimism, to expect a two-year-old to understand that scientific concept. Or maybe he was simply amusing himself as he kept me out of my mother’s hair. “Condensation,” he repeated, pressing my little finger through the damp drops. “Condensation,” I would have chirped. He would have walked me back into the kitchen and repeated the lesson at the window on the kitchen door, pulling back the curtains. “Condensation,” said Dad. “Condensation,” repeated Pam. Mom would have chimed in to agree that, yes, the steam rising from her spaghetti sauce or pea soup was actually forming condensation. They would have laughed at my tiny voice repeating the big word, and encouraged by their laughter, I might have repeated it again. And again.
Here is one of the advantages that accrue to a lucky first – or only – child: complete parental concentration, constant gentle attention to learning. That attention, condensed, if you will, would be somewhat diluted for second and subsequent children. Of course, big sister was there to help instruct, and I’m sure she did. My younger sisters had their own advantages, mild neglect being among them, but “condensation” belongs to the firstborn.
Pam Clements lives in Albany, New York. Her writing has appeared in literary magazines including Kalliope, The Palo Alto Review, The Plenitudes, and The Baltimore Review. She has published one volume of poetry, Earth Science, and has completed a memoir about the years she spent teaching in Charleston, South Carolina.