After the Sidewalk, Before the Street

I remember practicing different smiles in the mirror. I wanted to show off my new braces as much as possible. Braces meant I was finally a teenager. And being a teenager meant I could casually understand cool adult things, like coffee and crop tops and makeouts. 

I spent much of my childhood wishing to age faster. Yet a few months ago, in my adult life (where the coffee quantity outweighs the crop tops and makeouts combined), I was asked to put my child lenses on. I had been working for a few weeks with a team on developing a film for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD); they asked us to convey their commitment to restoring degraded land. After discussions of ideas and rounds of script submissions, the film would center around children and their unique position to envision a greener world. The focus shifted to imagination. The best ideas became the most abstract, absurd, and unrealistic. 

I found this angle frustrating. My team asked: what would our climate solutions look like if we saw them through the eyes of children--if we didn’t limit our dreams to the ‘possible?’ But I could only respond with solutions I found reasonable--being less wasteful, turning off lights, and closing faucets. My team asked me to put myself in the head of a child--to think in crayons, insects, monsters…not in recycling bins. What they really asked was, when imagining our future, why not come as idealists? 

In search of a solution, I tried to revisit my childhood. This proved difficult to do in my Nashville apartment, far from my family home in Miami. But a piece of the past watched me from my bedside table: Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends. I picked the book up, unsure of why I brought it with me to Nashville in the first place-- although I remembered the act of tossing it into my suitcase. As I began to read, I mainly wondered what would come after the sidewalk ended. How could I not answer this basic question about a book that captivated me for years? The uncertainty felt like not knowing my mom’s favorite color (it’s red, I think). 

One of the first stories I read was ”Ridiculous Rose,” about a girl whose mother told her not to eat with her fingers so, instead, “she ate with her toes.” I was reminded of the burn I gave myself in December when I grazed the side of my face with a curling iron. I have naturally curly hair. And, now, a scar on my left temple. I thought about what type of poem Shel would make of me. 

I don’t know what the poem would be called--my J name makes those alliteration icebreakers impossible. But I do know that the piece would open with an offbeat, ridiculous description of my hair, like ‘strands of dancing worms’ or ‘swinging noodles.' And if Silverstein opted for the latter, I bet good money ‘poodles’ would find its way into the next line. 

The description would evolve into a story in which I look in my mirror and take a hot tool to the face--minus the profanities and a very glamorous (unsuccessful) trip to my dermatologist. Silverstein would not waste words on my carelessness or my vanity. Rather, he would tie my story up with a bow: learn from this irony! Be grateful for what you have!

Maybe I just don’t read enough children’s books, but I admire Where The Sidewalk Ends for its simplicity. When I was younger, I loved the collection for its illustrations. Now I remember its scary stories most…well, the ones I considered scary.  

But when I saw the illustration of the crocodile at the dentist, I felt like I had swallowed a rock that I had swallowed before; my stomach found a familiar heaviness upon recognizing the dentist’s pliers, his figure crouched within the creature’s jaw, and teeth scattered like toenail clippings. Looking at the picture felt like being in the dark--I’m pretty sure I’m not afraid of it anymore, but I can’t guarantee I won’t jump if I hear a noise. 

The other poems I remembered felt familiar, too. The illustration for “For Sale” – the brother’s belly peeking out from under his shirt, the sister slouching at the other end of the page– made me want to give my only sibling a hug. The words of “Peanut-Butter Sandwich” made the inside of my mouth feel sticky.  I recalled the funny cadence of “Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too.” I still laughed at the tiny running man in “My Beard,” who wears his eyebrows in bushy tufts and his facial hair like a dress. 

On the other hand, my new adult eyes read most pieces differently than I remembered  them. I think I saw the point of many poems. You know, The Point. 

“Sky Seasoning” once told of a boy with a change of heart about lentil soup. Yet now I could see that the poem sees that “it’s amazing the difference/ A bit of sky can make.” The poem is about hope--and the “KERPLOP!” sound Silverstein imagines a stray fragment of sky would make upon landing in a bowl of soup. 

“Ourchestra” encourages finding satisfaction in our natural tools and abilities. The speaker resolves to “play [his] nose” because he “[hasn’t] got a horn” but finds that they make “music twice as good/ By playing what [they’ve] got.” “No Difference” says that we are all the same when we turn off the lights. 

Other poems are more conspicuous. “Listen to the Mustn’ts” says “Anything can happen, child,/ ANYTHING can be.” “The Land of Happy” calls a perfect world, where everything is “jolly and gay,” a total “bore.” And, finally, a few are as literal as literal gets: “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out” is about taking out the trash, and “Warning” cautions against nose-picking. 

I also heard Silverstein’s voice for the first time. He fills the collection with jokes (all the while avoiding my question about the end of the sidewalk…what nerve). The final page of the collection reads “this pen is almost out of ink but I still have enough I thin” -- the illustrated pen dying right at the final letter. And at times he seems to grapple with serious issues. In “It’s Dark In Here,” I could not help reading into the idea of the speaker “writing these poems/ From inside a lion.”

But I found even this new clarity unsatisfying. These were truths I knew--likely as a kid and certainly as an adult. Thanks but no thanks, Silverstein. Now, what I really needed to know was what happens after the sidewalk ends. Why did nobody tell me? And how could the book neglect to address its title, of all points to miss? 

Yet, when I was almost through with the collection, I realized that I had missed a poem. 

The poem “Where The Sidewalk Ends” describes the magical world “where the sidewalk ends and before the street begins.”  The poem envisions a space that children can see:  a dreamy landscape of soft light, “asphalt flowers,” and a resting “moon-bird.” I was shocked. There was no firetruck-red stop sign, no steep drop, no brick wall at the end. I thought, surely, what came after the sidewalk would be a purgatory before the highway…or at least a patch of neglected grass. 

Only then did I realize that I had read this book wrong my entire life: the collection is not about the sidewalk that ends nor the street that begins after it. Rather, it is about a sacred space seen through child eyes that do not fear judgment, embrace imagination, and are guided by poems with punchlines and funny illustrations. 

I returned to my film team with my best child-like solution: what if the mountains were made of shiny, resilient jade? What if they carved themselves into dragons so fierce nobody would dare cut down a tree again? 

And, as for the awkward place between the end of our sidewalks and the beginning of our streets…the book tried to tell me that maybe it isn’t awkward after all. When I see through children’s eyes, the unknown isn’t scary like the crocodile at the dentist or sad like the little sister for sale. If I can define a moment of transition by what it is, not what it’s between, maybe I’ll find it really is a land of “soft and white” grass, “peppermint wind,” slow and measured walking.