A Grain of Sand

I wanted ice cream earlier, so I went to the DQ. It was still bright outside, with the sun peering through the orange and red leaves. The fall is so beautiful here, where the trees grow over the road so everywhere you drive you're going through nature's tunnel. My high school creative writing teacher from Utah told us once that the most beautiful part of moving to the Northeast from the West was that out in Utah and California (she also lived in California for a while) the trees didn't grow over the road, but here they do, and it's spectacular.

There were a few people at the DQ, all bundled up because it is starting to get cooler. There was a woman, by herself, a man, by himself, and a group of four, two older women and two older men. One man had a cane, but walked very poorly even with the cane. The other three weren't much better off, but they were a bit more sprightly.

I was waiting for my small reese's cup blizzard when, behind me, the man with the cane fell on his stomach, cane sprawled out in front of him, practically kissing the ground.

I kept repeating oh no oh no oh no, and gave him my arm to lean on while another person gave him theirs on his other side. He got up, but he had such difficulty regaining his footing. It took three people to bring him to a table to look after him.

I know what it's like to constantly worry about falling, not personally but because my mother had polio when she was younger, and as a result she walks with a limp. I remember once we had tickets to see The Lion King on Broadway, and we got up early to get in the car and drive to New Haven to catch the train. Only we never made it to the show, because my mom fell down the steps in front of our house and ruined her knee, now it pops in and out so when it pops out she has to stop, sometimes for hours. I was ten, I think, when that happened, while my mom lay in the driveway in pain and I frantically called all of my aunts and friends nearby, panicked about what to do. I take good care of my mother, because she doesn't have anyone but me. I support her when she walks, I help her up and down stairs, I glare at the kids who stare at her limp, whose parents haven't taught them to respect other people.

When that man fell today, all I saw was my mother, who wants so desperately to be normal, to walk and run and dance. But she never had the opportunity to do those things. She doesn't know what it's like to feel the wind in her hair when she's running down a tree lined street, or to hear the whip of her lacrosse ball sailing into the net, or the velvety feel of the pink ballerina shoes she longs for every day of her life.

I don't want her to be the person with the cane who falls. I don't want her to grow old. I don't want to grow old. I want to stay young, to live on the lacrosse field, to thrive off of the sound pouring from my violin, to live for a life of dawns and grass and leaf piles.

I want everything to freeze where it is, to take the great moments and hold them forever. I want the man with the cane to be okay. I want every person with the cane to be okay.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence