THE HEALING HEEL | redclaydiary.com

THE HEALING HEEL

I’m sitting at breakfast many decades ago, watching me watching my family.

My sister Barbara is talking about her upcoming speech before a Northington

Elementary School gathering, worried about what she’ll wear and how she’ll do.

Brother Ronny is helping Mother pack his lunch as he carefully picks over his food.

I’m grabbing for the next-to-last slice of bread from the wrapper on the table,

but one of the slices is the heel, so it doesn’t count. Everybody knows that the

heel is the most undesirable piece of light bread, and everybody avoids it. I

hesitate, unwilling to take the final non-heel slice, because Mother has taught

us never to take the last of anything. I decide I can do without bread this morning.

But Mother always notices everything—especially those things you wish she

wouldn’t notice. She quickly pulls both slices out of the wrapper, places the

“whole” one on my plate as if unconsciously, and starts buttering the heel for

herself. Or oleo margarine-ing it, to be more precise.

I sigh in relief and treat myself to a nice jellied sandwich to go with my

brown-sugared oatmeal and salt-and-peppered eggs, while Mother makes

do with the piece of bread nobody else will touch.

It is at this moment that I recognize the curse with which I will be saddled

the rest of my life. I can’t help seeing things. The small invisible camera

over my shoulder records everything—everything I wish to see, everything

I wish I’d never seen, everything I imagine I’m seeing, everything I wish

you could see, everything I’ve ever seen and will in time see. Other writers

and would-be writers have confirmed this curse with me—they have it, too

The jellied bread doesn’t taste quite as good as it should, because I recognize

my selfishness, and I recognize Mother’s sacrifice—one of a hundred small

sacrifices she’ll make on behalf of her family this week and most of the weeks

of her remaining life. My shoulder camera records more than I will ever be able

to write about—how Mother gives up part of her social life to raise her family,

how she denies herself a new dress and instead makes a dress for Barbara,

how she saves the flour sacks to make shirts for us boys, how she gives up

some of her own aspirations so that we can live ours.

Down all the days, wherever I travel, I and my camera keep noticing the

beauty of other mothers, other people, whenever they take one step back

to allow me my moment of stepping high, how they are there to help me

without even asking for or receiving credit, how they come and go from

my life with such grace and ease. How they never ask our thanks.

Mother constructed me, nurtured me, stood by while I fluttered from the

nest, then kept up with me and my accomplishments and tribulations for

many years, waiting patiently until I was mature enough to appreciate her

aloud or in my writings.

Now she stands behind my camera, occasionally reminding me of her wisdoms,

now and then chiding me when I forget who I am and who I came from. And

she still grabs the heel first, just to gift me with one more small, unselfish

favor…hoping I’ll pass the wisdoms and favors on to others