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Septiembre 21, 2005
test lesson
The sniffles comfort me. One tiny way and then another: like a backward sneeze. Instead of cleaning things out, emotion and ailment taking in everything close by which is not much at all, really. It is a mighty effort.
Sometimes when I am embarrassed, I sniffle a little because the idea of lifting the belly out and opening up to the air seems to take up too much space.
I think back to the times I found comfort at the end of crying, when I knew it would stop hurting, finally. The ebb of the drama and the flow of tears and triumph in managing to stave off the resulting hiccups.
The woman with the pretty lips and one purple latex-free glove took about 16 ounces of blood from my arm and I tried to be brave but I jerked. I thought of bee stingers stuck in my arm and cats holding on by the teeth and blackberry thorns grabbing through the t shirt, and a splinter deeply followed by one heroic needle dipped in peroxide. Oh grief, if I didn't flinch so hard she warned me she would do it again if I couldn't remember to be a grown up.
If you could have seen me today complaining to Juliana about a bruise the size of a blueberry muffin and nearly so ugly purple, you would have thought I really had one, but I suppose most of you know I am prone to exaggeration.
The preschool day is full of crying, it is absolutely breathtaking and burns the eyes, almost instantaneously contagious. We weep for one another and call it love and when the clean-up sniffles finally come, the real cause for the sobbing is washed away by the shock of hope. We convince the children to rise and put off the thought of stings and bites and pokes, open up their little belly bellows to breathe deeply and that too is as contagious.
So it is a good to know what is in your head and through your heart, even if it means giving a little up, because you never know what is catching.
just in case | By crymytinyflood | 09:42 PM
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