Things She Didn't Know

Joining emily at imperfect prose:



I miss her sometimes, that skinny, freckle-faced girl with brown, stringy hair flying behind as she ran barefooted through the neighborhood.  There, each back yard blended into the next forming a block-long playground, and she and the neighbor kids took turns playing on each other’s swing sets and splashing in each other’s inflatable wading pools.  They played hopscotch and kickball and Jarts, or at least they did so until a group of lawyers decided it was much too dangerous for kids to throw sharp metal lawn darts toward one other.  On summer days, she hopped on her second-hand Schwinn bicycle with its fat rubber tires and wire basket and pedaled it to the playground behind Lincoln Elementary or to the local library for story hour.   She was young and happy and life was good, but there were so many things she didn’t know.

She didn’t know that whipped cream didn’t always come out of a can; that some people bought cream and whipped it, and that was how it got its name in the first place.

She didn’t know that everybody didn’t make grilled cheese sandwiches by pressing them with an iron between sheets of aluminum foil.

She didn’t know that the first day of deer hunting season wasn’t a national holiday; that some people had to go to work and school on that day.

She didn’t know that everyone didn’t gather at family farms on Sundays to play in the barns with their cousins.

She didn’t know that everybody didn’t have family reunions where business meetings were conducted according to Robert’s Rules of Order.

She didn’t know that one day she would, indeed, regret not practicing the piano.

She didn’t know that fellow classmates with whom she played on the monkey bars at recess and exchanged cards on Valentine’s Day had abusive and alcoholic parents.

She didn’t know that some kids didn’t go to Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, and church camp; and that everybody didn’t know that Jesus loved them.

She didn’t know how mean kids could be to one another.

She didn’t know what was going on in Vietnam that made people so angry.

She didn’t know that suicide would take a member of her family.

She didn’t know how little money her family had to get by on, or the toll that took on her father.

She didn’t know that a classmate and friend in junior high would be shot by his stepfather and die before emergency responders could find him.

She didn’t know what she was doing when she went to college.

She didn’t know that the word glioblastoma would one day enter her vocabulary.

She didn’t know that the beautiful girl who played basketball at her high school, who sometimes answered the door when she was delivering newspapers, would grow up someday to live in New York City, work in the World Trade Center, and die in a terrorist attack.

She didn’t know that her body was broken and wouldn’t be able to make babies.

She didn’t know that one day she would sit holding the hand of a friend who was receiving chemotherapy.

That young freckle-faced girl with the stringy brown hair is long gone now, existing only in memory.  I like visiting her there now and again; returning to the days when she was young and happy and the worst pain she knew was that of a stubbed toe from running barefooted through the neighborhood.