It's Winter - What Can We Say?
It's snowing again and everyone’s sick. This time it seems to be the Green Death as we call it in our family. In one friend’s household a college-age child fell ill last Sunday and within 36 hours all four of his family members were also clenching and writhing - drivin’ the porcelain bus as they say.
My friend’s body must’ve thought it would be funny to add fainting to the mix too. Anyway, it shut the lights out inside his head just as he was making his midnight way toward the john so that THERE HE WAS in a heap on the floor trying to regain consciousness when one of the other kids, en route to the bathroom himself, stepped right on him. Then they BOTH screamed, which made me picture that scene when the very young Drew Barrymore comes upon ET in her brother’s closet. Aaaaaah! AAAAAHHH!
The January I was in 6th grade a whole shelf-full of books fell on my head in the school library. Then the next day I broke out in cold sores, my specialty that year as my school picture eternally attests. The day after that we had to go to my cousin’s in Brockton and on the ride back I got so sick, so truly limp-as-a-skinned-bunny-sick I couldn’t even put my legs down on the ground once home. My mom carried me up the stairs and put me in my new red pajamas and I knew I looked small and scared and skinny-necked - a lot like ET in the closet myself, come to think of it.
I knew I wouldn’t be going to school the next day either but would have one, maybe two days in bed with hourly Room Service and a little bell to ring if I thought I might throw up.
My bed was right up against the window and I turned on my side to look out it at the old elm tree I looked at every night of those little girl years and felt empty.... lucky....safe. And it was snowing then too.
(the tree died the next year - The men who took it down said it dated back to Revolutionary days. I still see it in my mind.)
