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Authors: Judy L. Mandel
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me feel like I could fly around the house to bring Linda anything she needed. I felt powerful in that costume, like I could heal my sister with just the right smile.
When they started to unload her from the back of the ambulance, I saw the wide white cast from her waist to her toes, with a bar between her legs. It took three men to carry her, but when they got to the front door, they stopped. My mother looked over at my father, who had that worry crease in his forehead, and they both ran down the stairs. Linda, in her cast, couldn’t fit through.
“I can take the door off the hinges,” my father told the men.
“She may not fit even then. We may have to turn her on her side.”
My mother took a deep breath. From what I could see, Linda looked pretty worried and scared, so I gave her one of my healing smiles. She smiled back.
My father got his tools, unscrewed something, and lifted the door off its hinges. They finally turned her sideways, with one leg up and one down, to fit through the opening. Her feet came in first, and I watched to see her head come in. When they turned her right-side up, her cheeks were wet.
Since my mother needed to sleep in the extra bed in Linda’s room while she recovered, I had to move to my own room for awhile. This was a grave disappointment to me. Having missed my sister for a month already, I now had to give up sharing the room with her too. We wouldn’t get to talk at night and try to listen to my parents talking in their room next door.
It was winter, and in the next few days we saw our first real snowfall. Linda could see the top of the lower roof, over the garage, from her bed, and I caught her staring out at the snow-covered surface.
“I would really like to feel that snow,” she said.
I went to the kitchen and got one of my mother’s metal mixing bowls. Then I got my jacket and mittens and went back to Linda’s room.
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll see.”
I opened up the window and the screen underneath, crawled out on the roof, and scooped some snow into the bowl. When I started back in, I saw my mother coming through the door.
She didn’t yell like I was afraid she would. She just took the bowl from my hands as I climbed back in and put it on top of Linda’s cast on her tummy.
My mother pulled up a chair next to the bed, and I sat on the legs of the cast. The three of us each grabbed a handful of the cold icy stuff, rolled it into a ball, and stuck them all together in the bowl. It ended up a perfect miniature of the snowman we always built on the front lawn, and we used raisins for eyes, a small piece of carrot for the nose, and a funny hat my mother made out of an old red sock. I crawled back on the roof to put our snowman where Linda could see it from her bed.
chapter eighteen
2005
I ’ M GETTING MORE disciplined now with this project, as I have started to call it. Mornings I will find one pile of notes or news clippings and reread them until they jar a memory from my past. Then, I’ll write a page or two from that memory. Afternoons, I’ll review and rewrite the piece. The next day, I either add it to my growing file called The Book on my computer, or I trash it if it’s awful. Either way, I usually wind up with a revelation I didn’t expect.
My office is getting crowded with notes hung on my bulletin board or Scotch-taped to the edges of my windowsill. Photos of my parents, my sisters, and myself are tacked up where I see them each time I look up from my computer. I took pictures of the rebuilt neighborhood when I went to visit the crash site, and those are hanging next to a photo of the burned-out building from 1952 as well as one of the split-level house I grew up in.
Today, I’m starting with more notes from my mother. They are spread out randomly on my kitchen table. Because of her notoriously bad handwriting, it takes me a while to decipher each piece. Her writing was so bad that she had printed most of hernotes in block letters. The
When they started to unload her from the back of the ambulance, I saw the wide white cast from her waist to her toes, with a bar between her legs. It took three men to carry her, but when they got to the front door, they stopped. My mother looked over at my father, who had that worry crease in his forehead, and they both ran down the stairs. Linda, in her cast, couldn’t fit through.
“I can take the door off the hinges,” my father told the men.
“She may not fit even then. We may have to turn her on her side.”
My mother took a deep breath. From what I could see, Linda looked pretty worried and scared, so I gave her one of my healing smiles. She smiled back.
My father got his tools, unscrewed something, and lifted the door off its hinges. They finally turned her sideways, with one leg up and one down, to fit through the opening. Her feet came in first, and I watched to see her head come in. When they turned her right-side up, her cheeks were wet.
Since my mother needed to sleep in the extra bed in Linda’s room while she recovered, I had to move to my own room for awhile. This was a grave disappointment to me. Having missed my sister for a month already, I now had to give up sharing the room with her too. We wouldn’t get to talk at night and try to listen to my parents talking in their room next door.
It was winter, and in the next few days we saw our first real snowfall. Linda could see the top of the lower roof, over the garage, from her bed, and I caught her staring out at the snow-covered surface.
“I would really like to feel that snow,” she said.
I went to the kitchen and got one of my mother’s metal mixing bowls. Then I got my jacket and mittens and went back to Linda’s room.
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll see.”
I opened up the window and the screen underneath, crawled out on the roof, and scooped some snow into the bowl. When I started back in, I saw my mother coming through the door.
She didn’t yell like I was afraid she would. She just took the bowl from my hands as I climbed back in and put it on top of Linda’s cast on her tummy.
My mother pulled up a chair next to the bed, and I sat on the legs of the cast. The three of us each grabbed a handful of the cold icy stuff, rolled it into a ball, and stuck them all together in the bowl. It ended up a perfect miniature of the snowman we always built on the front lawn, and we used raisins for eyes, a small piece of carrot for the nose, and a funny hat my mother made out of an old red sock. I crawled back on the roof to put our snowman where Linda could see it from her bed.
chapter eighteen
2005
I ’ M GETTING MORE disciplined now with this project, as I have started to call it. Mornings I will find one pile of notes or news clippings and reread them until they jar a memory from my past. Then, I’ll write a page or two from that memory. Afternoons, I’ll review and rewrite the piece. The next day, I either add it to my growing file called The Book on my computer, or I trash it if it’s awful. Either way, I usually wind up with a revelation I didn’t expect.
My office is getting crowded with notes hung on my bulletin board or Scotch-taped to the edges of my windowsill. Photos of my parents, my sisters, and myself are tacked up where I see them each time I look up from my computer. I took pictures of the rebuilt neighborhood when I went to visit the crash site, and those are hanging next to a photo of the burned-out building from 1952 as well as one of the split-level house I grew up in.
Today, I’m starting with more notes from my mother. They are spread out randomly on my kitchen table. Because of her notoriously bad handwriting, it takes me a while to decipher each piece. Her writing was so bad that she had printed most of hernotes in block letters. The
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