The Wizard of Ahs

One of my most vivid memories of early childhood was spent on the floor of our family’s “Florida Room”—a terrazzo-floored, jalousied extension at the rear of the house where our tube-in-a-box Dumont television resided.  We had a rag area rug and a funky sort of unstructured, mid-century couch my mother called a “Bahama Bed.”  

On this particular night I was probably no more than four.  My father made popcorn, a feat which required far more skill than it does today.  He heated oil in an old aluminum pot.  The only other time I saw that pot used was when I was sick and my mother placed it, oddly, by the side of my bed.  It sure seemed like magic when the handful of kernels Dad dropped inside the pot was replaced by an overflowing batch of steaming popcorn.  The smell infused the house and us with excitement as we sat down in front of the television.  The overture started, its sounds marred by crackles and scratches yet delivering an introduction that would forever bring me back to that very moment.  It was The Wizard of Oz. 

Sitting on the floor at my father’s feet, I was instantly drawn in to the plight of young Dorothy.  I knew what it felt like to be overlooked and underfoot, laughed at for nothing more than the innocent fancy of youth.   The world of her Kansas farm seemed tricked out with mortal dangers—a rutting pig, an adult bully (with her own scary leitmotif), a deadly cyclone, and a stranger.  I yelled at the television: “Don’t you know you are not supposed to talk to strangers!”

I was terrified when the adults boarded themselves up safely in the storm shelter, leaving the poor young girl to suffer the ravages of the storm alone.  I was oblivious to the fantasy of her injury-induced dream, afraid that my house could also be sucked up into the frequent storms that hit South Florida.  By the time Dorothy opened the door into Munchkinland, I was no longer in touch with reality.  Before long, I thought scarecrows could dance, trees could throw their apples, and that a green-skinned witch was hiding around every corner.

Burying my head in my mother’s lap, she distracted me from the horror by playing with my hair.  Dorothy has her thick hair in beautiful braids.  Wouldn’t it be fun, my mother suggested, to style my hair that way?  Sliding onto the floor cross-legged, my mother produced her signature pink hair brush with the white bristles and a couple of rubber bands.  My dirty-blonde hair was so much longer than Dorothy’s that it produced magnificent ropes, each leaving off with its own little ringlet.  I slept in them that night and then had fun the next day whipping them left and right as I turned my head.   They were long enough to pretend to write with them at the table, or to hold them over my lip as a sinister mustache.

The message behind The Wizard of Oz was wasted on me during that first tender viewing.  I did not connect the characters of Oz to the people in Dorothy’s own home life.  Nor did I understand that her adventure was the stuff of dreams—real life perils expressing themselves to children as haunted slumber.  I spent weeks searching the skies for flying monkeys and twister clouds.  I looked for angry faces in the crags of every tree on my block.  

It was years until The Wizard of Oz was for me a beloved classic.  It accentuated the fears of my youthful innocence, opening my eyes to the perils that lurked everywhere.  It taught me what real terror felt like—to have the constants of home and family threatened.  More and more often, I demanded that my mother braid my hair, loving not only the whimsy of the blended tresses but also the bonding that came from the girlie mother-daughter exchange.  In that very act of primping, I understood a parent’s caring for a child.  It was then that I understood:  there’s no place like home.