Lifesavers

The clouds hang like leaden shields between my house and the prospect of anything brighter.  Day and night become almost indistinguishable, because to open the drapes is less desirable than the bright artificial lights within.

Once, long ago, when I was six, there was a year like this.  I was in first grade and I remember sitting at the desk I had longed for.  All my short life my father had been at the U of I and I had been so eager to join him in academia.  I had high hopes for that year and they all sank slowly into a wall of windows being absorbed by the grayness outside.

We were not talking about Rosetta stones or imperial jewels.  We weren't even discussing alchemy.  Instead I was faced with counting reindeer heads in little squares and waiting to take a turn that never seemed to materialize in the Hansel and Gretal house the sixth graders kept in our room.

My world had turned into a never ending struggle to pull on snow-pants and recalcitrant rubber boots over the new shoes I had been so proud of, and an almost unendurable waiting.  Waiting to turn in my paper, waiting for my reading group to be called, waiting for the morning break and my turn to punch holes for straws in all the little milk bottles and then it happened.

One afternoon when I thought I never wanted to come to school again I was called to crank the old fashioned record player!  I remember how it took both hands to turn that black metal crank with the wooden handle and how I got to do it again and again as we learned the song, "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly.  I don't know why she swallowed a fly.  Perhaps she'll die."

It was a turning point.  I began laughing uncontrollably and had my name put in the Noisy box, a place of shame in the corner of the blackboard.  That stopped the laughing.  I was mortified, but somehow I didn't feel so deeply sad anymore.

I sang that song for my mother that night.  Unfortunately we were on our way to my great grandmother's funeral, but my mother was kind.  She told me it was a nice song, just not to sing it anymore.

I had discovered irony.  I didn't know it at the time, but it would be a life saver for the rest of my life.  Now I sit here with all the time in the world on my hands waiting for my turn with the big crank.