My favorite lines:
"The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water"
and
"The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sun-down after work."
You see, my mother loved to swim. She learned while at college and eventually became a lifesaving instructor. My dad was flailing and awkward in the water. On Friday Family Nights at the YMCA. He tossed us in the shallow end while our strong-bodied mother swam laps, all the strokes.
My dad was a wrestler. Buffalo Center did not have a wrestling team, but when he was at University of Iowa, he joined the team and even got to wrestle once or twice. When we were little, he'd wrestle with us on the living room floor. I knew lots of the terms and moves when I became Ft. Dodge Senior High's first female wrestling manager in 1977.
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After lunch, my dad read us a piece of writing he's been working on the past few days. It was a heartwrenching story from his early years as a doctor.
An older doctor, a surgeon and a mentor, told my father he wanted to tell him about his hardest experience in medicine. Before he told the story, he asked my dad to promise to not ask questions or refer to the episode after its telling.
My dad nodded, and then sat silently as the man told of surgery to set the arm of a 12-year-old who had experienced a compound fracture while sliding into home plate and crashing into the catcher's mitt.
Twenty minutes into the surgery, the boy's heart stopped. When shocking the heart failed to get it beating, the doctor sliced into the boy's chest, pushed apart his ribs, and hand-compressed the heart to keep blood circulating. Every few minutes he paused to see if the child's heart was yet beating on its own.
When the doctor's hand cramped with exhaustion, the anesthesiologist took over. The two then alternated, for more than 30 minutes, before accepting defeat.
The doctor then had to tell the parents their son had died. The mother collapsed wailing: "It was only a broken arm! It was only a broken arm!"
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This evening I heard Vern barking, which drew my attention to the window. On the back lawn were my parents, blowing bubbles on what was perhaps the most perfect Iowa evening of the year.
Bubbles 2020
Bubbles 1985
Enough.
Be well.
Write.
Allison
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