Blood-Red and Gingham Green

Some say that memory is rose-tinted, hindsight being not only twenty-twenty but also casting a glow over the reality so as to leave everything looking — from the present backward — blurred in happy tones of pinkened truth.

Others say that memories are like old photographs: captured snippets that fade with time, cropped in snapshot-frame remembrance that neatly deletes the story as it existed on either side of the single picture.

I have just such a faded-snapshot memory, captured in camera, among my childhood keepsakes. My recollection of the events surrounding that photograph may not be fully detailed and carry a slightly rosy tint, but there is nothing faded about the feelings it evokes. Picture, if you will:

• pre-kindergarten Feve, hair bright white-blonde, sitting on grandpa’s lap at the dining table with plastic tea things strewn about in ready-for-use tea-party style: the tea cups — yellow; the table cloth — checkered gingham green
• grandpa is smiling in this pictorial memorial, looking sheepish but delighted, clearly enjoying the proceedings even if slightly chagrined that his daughter (Feve’s momma) is capturing his Domination By Granddaughter on camera for all posterity
• Feve is serious-looking, pointing at one of the cups: clearly grandpa needs directions for how this is to go — after all, what could grandpas possibly know about having tea parties with little girls?

You would think this interaction would have taken place during a light-hearted visit, a doting grandfather delighting – and being delighted by – his eldest grandchild. It would be easy to assume that it was, perhaps, a common occurrence that just happened to get caught on camera one time. That it was something simple.

The truth is slightly more complicated.

I was five years old… Of that I’m fairly certain, as it was prior to my starting kindergarten and right before my little brother’s second birthday.

It was night time. Of that, I am exactly certain, because my mother had waited til my brother was asleep up in his room (my bed time was slightly later) before trying to assemble the toy that was to be his birthday present.

The exact sequence of events is lost on me; I was too young to really ‘get’ it, and it seemed to all move in a flash. But I remember…

…a shout from the kitchen

…a blood-stained towel wrapped around my mom’s finger

…her, calmly, on the phone, saying: I need to take myself to the hospital

And then suddenly my mom was gone and my grandpa was there saying “everything is going to be all right,” which — because I had absolute unshaking faith in the man who spoke the words — I believed whole-heartedly.

It could have been a traumatizing event for me. I’d seen my mother’s blood-soaked towel wrapped around her finger after all. I’d watched her call — not for my father, who was working second shift at the time (and who would have, I understand in retrospect, been completely useless in the situation anyway); not for medical assistance of any kind (it was long enough ago and in a small enough town that it was possible to reach the family doctor at his home if she’d wanted to); but for somebody to sit with me — and then I watched her leave.

But I was not traumatized. Not in any way.

If anything, in my small child’s mind, I filed away the steps to take in an emergency:

1. cover wound (or at least: don’t bleed all over the place)
2. stay calm while you make arrangements for those who cannot fend for themselves
3. don’t call dad*
4. take care of your own damned self

I noted these things. Vaguely.**

And then I played for hours with my grandpa who sat up with me until my mom came home to take the photo that sealed the memory.

We colored in coloring books. (Barbie, no doubt. 😉 )

We made words on the refrigerator with my alphabet magnets.

And we ended our adventures – begun with the wrapped-finger blood-red of my mother’s cut – by ‘drinking’ from yellow plastic tea cups on a tablecloth of gingham green.

for the Reminiscences project prompt: GREEN

To learn more about the project, or to join in yourself, click the badge or the prompt link above.

~~~~~

*Obviously she called her dad, but as far as I was concerned she called grandpa. There was, I think, a subtle subconscious message sent to me that night though about the fact that she didn’t call my dad.

**The vagueness faded at first, then – due to repeated instances – sharpened and crystallized over time. My greatest strength is probably also my greatest stubborn-mule fault, and I learned it from my mother, who was a pro: I can take care of my own damned self.