It has been quite the day already. Starting out with a passive aggressive little 'quip' referring to the aging of workers which on the surface seems innocent enough..even if I wasn't the oldest woman on the work roster and, if the person making the remark had not also mentioned offhandedly , the fact that Susan Boyle also had HER upper lip waxed....hmmm...are you sensing a pattern beginning to emerge?
I left work and proceeded into one of the grayest dismal days I have ever experienced in January . I got into my vehicle with not just a bit of bile rising in my craw at the aged Susan Boyle remark which would not have seemed so biting if I could even sing just the tiniest bit.
A nerve wracking drive home with windshield wipers clearing the rain drops away before they froze, as the drifts of snow licked the pavement as they crossed in front of me. Grinding my teeth and lifting my foot off the gas, I cautiously drove into the driveway only about 10 minutes later than usual...not too bad for an old crow...feathers and all.
As per usual, upon my arrival home, I sat down at the computer with a quick update on statuses, news, and obituaries..and then I saw it.
I don't know why the looking at the obituary column is such an important part of my mornings. Morbid curiosity? Idol interest? Search for fodder for gossip? Probably all of the above.
Today I learned more than I have ever wanted to know. A childhood friend was listed in the recent passings. A friend with whom I had played cops and robbers. A friend with whom I have ridden bicycles to the country school 5 miles a day in good weather, and with whom our families car pooled school transportation in the winter.
If I close my eyes, I can still feel the BUMP BUMP as my front tire and then my rear tire ran over my friend's back. We had been racing along a gravelled country road and he and his bike had fallen right in front of me. Before I could stop I had ridden right over him..lucky for us both he had fallen on his stomach, otherwise the consequences might have been dire indeed.
I remember being crowded into his dad's car, five of us, the smell of wet scarves and the itch of woolen mittens with the heater blowing on my feet as I looked out the window through those plastic window defrost shields.
I remember this friend's first week of Grade One..how he fought and cried as his mom and the teacher literally dragged him into the school to his desk every morning for the first week. It didn't occur to me from my elite Grade Three side of the room, how stressed and scared he must have been to put up such a struggle, and how much his mother must have worried about him throughout the school day.
No councillors then. No kindergarten either. One day you were playing free as the wind and the next you were forced into sitting at a desk, with a strange group of 'other kids' and a teacher whom you never had laid eyes on before.
Ball playing, wiener roasts, climbing trees, riding the horse bareback across the stubble so when we fell off it didn't hurt so much, crawling into grain boxes, hiding cigarettes in magpie nests, and the inevitable reminder of the 'back breaking' bicycle incident.. from which he claimed he never truly recovered. All these were discussed in the last few messages on Face Book.
I wasn't aware that he was even ill. I feel it must have come quickly. I hope he didn't suffer. I do not know what kind of man or parent he became, or hardly anything about his life between country school days and our encounter on Face Book.
But I do know he was a great playmate. A slight, little blue eyed, soft spoken boy, with a shy smile and deep dimples, who would allow a somewhat pushy neighbour girl be the TOP GUN. A quiet 'biker' companion, who would wait patiently at the end of the lane, after the Pig Tailed Creature would call out, "Hey , O.....Wait for me." I guess the risk of being late for school was overshadowed by the risk of her catching up before he got to school.
I feel that God is keeping him safe.
May God also keep me safe from the self-indulgence that allows someone's thoughtless remarks about age and lip hair interfere with the wonder of good health and the enjoyment of the gift of this day and all my days to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment