Small Beauties

It is winter in more ways than one, thought Johanna as she stared out across the newly fallen snow from inside her room. She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment noticing how the reflected light turned the insides of her eyelids a brilliant pink. Opening her eyes again she looked away from the window and around her room with it’s sterile white walls and institutional hospital bed. Today she couldn’t see the small beauties.


Her sixtieth birthday—the irony of it struck her again. She’d had a speech to give that evening on the importance of good nutrition in early childhood. New study data to go over, a graduate student to mentor, papers to grade…a busy day planned. A day I didn’t get to live, she thought. The end of her life really. She remembered the paralyzing fear and confusion when she realized she could not feel her left arm. The agonizing pain that struck her head so suddenly she fell to the floor unknowing for a time. The awakening in darkness and frantic desperate scramble for the phone to call an ambulance. But worse, the desperate knowing that this was the end. Knowledge is an evil thing sometimes.


That had been ten years ago. It seemed like fifty some days, trapped as she was in this wheelchair. She stared down at the rolled white washcloth limply clenched in her left hand. She could smell the sweaty rancid odor of death. Her nails were getting a little long, maybe she’d ask the aide to trim them. Thank-goodness tomorrow was bath day. Anymore it was the highlight of her week. She loved the sensuality of the warm water running over her skin. When she’d been a whole person she’d bathed everyday. Now she was a half person and got a weekly bath…she tried not to think about it for it was an issue that could make her fall.


In her mind, everyday was walked on a precipice. On either side the deep abyss of depression with its siren’s call of darkness. The trick was to not fall. She’d fallen many times and the climb out was agonizingly difficult. One never knew what it would be. Yesterday it had been the Jell-O. Lord, how she hated Jell-O. They served it here practically everyday. Where was the apple pie, chocolate cake, blueberry cobbler? If only they knew how it was made, she thought. It had been one of her favorite nutrition labs to teach. Grinding up the cow hooves and bones, purifying the collagen, adding flavoring. The ‘eeww’ factor for the students had always struck her as funny…and she was sure none of her students had ever looked at Jell-O quite the same way again.


Today the snow had helped her climb from the abyss. A thing of beauty, she thought. So fresh and bright and new. It dazzled her senses. Beauty was her saving grace in this lifeless place. It was her most often request. “Bring me something beautiful.” She’d say to her caregivers. Her windowsill contained a cornucopia of beautiful things…a bluebird feather and a small purple stone, a prism with its rainbow splashes of color, a small book of poems and a twisted piece of driftwood. Her small beauties.


Her thoughts drifted, tomorrow was her birthday. She’d be fresh and clean from her bath…she gazed at the bright light out side, suddenly brighter. She looked away and blinked her eyes rapidly, transported dreamily back—back to when she was young and whole—to when she had her whole life in front of her. She remembered the laughter, the loving, and the birth of her daughter. It is over, she thought. Lovingly she gazed down at the bit of sunshine that Dr. Gibson placed in her arms. Pure beauty. Yes, she thought, winter is a lovely season to be born.

"Booo!"

A restless wind rustled the leaves as Jonah and I crept down the dark street toward Mr. McGregor’s house. Clouds covered the moon and then skittered away creating deep shadows that drifted and crawled ahead of us. On the next street over, we could hear laughing children run door to door with delighted cries of “trick or treat!” Mr. McGregor’s street was empty.

Mr. McGregor’s house sat back from the sidewalk, across from the cemetery, and all of us children knew that it was haunted by the ghost of Mr. McGregor’s dead wife Jennifer, who came out every Halloween night to walk among the graves. Mr. McGregor, we knew, was not far behind, being the closest thing to a walking skeleton that we had ever seen. We would watch him from across the playground next to our school as he tended the graves in the cemetery. On sunny days, we would sneak into the graveyard through a hole in the fence to play tag or read the headstones, but always with a watchful eye for Mr. McGregor who took a grim view of children.

That Halloween night, Jonah and I were on a Scavenger hunt. It was hosted every year by our best friend Michael’s mother. Our list of items was almost complete. We had a dead spider with web, a feather, a pebble from the lake, a purple leaf, a broom, a piece of candy—the easiest one, a cross we’d made from two twigs and a piece of straw, and a head of garlic. The only thing left was a picture of a haunted house thus the reason we were sneaking past the graveyard to the only ‘genuine’ haunted house in town. Jonah had gotten a digital camera for his birthday last month and we knew no one else’s list would be as complete as ours—if only our courage would hold.

Walking past the cemetery, shadows from the moon, made the stones seem to shift and shudder. We walked a little faster. Neither of us would dare to speak for fear of attracting unwanted attention. The sound of our feet on the sidewalk seemed unnaturally loud. We paused briefly as a low growl came from up ahead, it was followed by a spate of barking. A cat yowled to the right—a short screech and then silence. The trees that lined the street menaced, branches taking the shapes of skeletal fingers with long black nails. The house ahead loomed, growing taller and more sinister the closer we came.

Jonah had his camera out and ready. Just a little closer and we could run for it. The house was dark. Deserted. We stopped at the end of the sidewalk, and Jonah raised his camera. Screeeech…the front door began to open. Was it the ghost of Mr. McGregor’s wife? Hurry up Jonah! My heart racing, I grabbed his sleeve. We have to get out of here! The words stuck in my throat. Suddenly, a sound behind us. “Booo!” A flash of light. Not waiting for my friend, I turned and ran.

We were right of course—the picture clinched it—but forever in my nightmares, I will hear Mr. McGregor’s laughter following us all the way down the street.