Knocked Out Cold

One of the joys of reading occurs when a sentence or even a phrase triggers a personal memory. One of the books I’m reading now (I always have one nonfiction and one fiction going) is Whistling Past The Graveyard, by Susan Crandall. It’s a story told from the viewpoint of a ten-year-old girl in Mississippi during the racial unrest of the 1960’s.

Last night as I was reading in bed (my favorite time to read) these two sentences took me back to childhood, just as Proust’s first bite of a madeleine cake released a flood of memories:

            “I thought about the swings at my school. Everyone always raced

            out the door to get one at recess.”

Suddenly I was a grade school kid back in Odessa, Missouri, racing across the playground toward the swings. I was ungainly, but long of leg, and I was in the lead of a pack of kids who, at that moment, wanted more than anything to get their butts on swing seats.

My heels were winged, but at the last moment before I grabbed for a swing, Patsy Shaw, who was on my heels, gave me a shove, propelling me directly into one of the steel bars that supported the swings. When my forehead struck the bar I was knocked out cold and landed on my back.

My mother, who taught high school history and geography on the school’s second floor, happened to be adjusting the blind on a window overlooking the playground at the very moment I flopped backward onto the ground.

Wearing her signature three-inch-high-heeled shoes, Mother raced out her classroom door, down the hall, down the stairs, out the door, and across the playground.

Upon returning to consciousness I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was my mother’s anxious face peering down at me. My forehead sported what Mother called a “goose egg,” and I was whisked home to rest in bed with an ice bag on my forehead.

I don’t recall the recuperation, but I clearly remember the miracle of Mother’s caring presence when I needed her most.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer