In response to last week’s post, my friend Dave wrote,

All are hard, but in many ways, sedimentary grief is worse than igneous or metamorphic because it’s less stable, less predictable, and less durable.

.       .       .

Junior year of high school, my best friend Lee grabbed my hand and pulled me into the line. My ankles wobbled in the ice skates. Her eyes were bright beneath her knit cap. “We’re going to crack the whip!” I didn’t know what that was.

We were toward the end of a forming line, Lee on my left, someone I didn’t know on my right, with hands much bigger than Lee’s. I didn’t know how we were going, but we were going, first slowly, then jolted faster. My arms pulled straight, my elbows locked, my chest constricted. I couldn’t breathe, could hardly see, only blurred, shimmery shapes.

“I have to get out!”

I pulled my hands from theirs, legs moving like a newborn giraffe, scraping and clacking against the ice until I got to the edge, put my hands on my knees, and breathed.

Lee skated up, steady. “We should go closer to the front,” she said. “It won’t be as bad.”

We rejoined the reforming line and started again. It was just as bad. It was worse. I tried to break away, but the hands held on tight. I fought back and fell away, slid away, collapsed on a bench and pulled at the knots in the laces of my skates, vision still blurred but now because of tears.

I didn’t understand my fear. Skating wasn’t that frightening, but I was so panicked I could have screamed, may have screamed.

.       .       .

Mom and I were sorting through her things, preparing for the move to assisted living. She looked through photos as I separated the useful from the useless in her medicine cabinet, a bag of useless at my feet.

She mentioned the house we lived in until I was four, did I remember it? I nodded, added, “There was a swimming pool at the end of the street.”

She nodded, too. “And in the winter, an ice rink.” She stopped sorting, gazed off. “He would take you in the baby carriage and get on the end of the crack the whip line. They would skate and spin until the carriage would go flying off across the ice. The other mothers told me I shouldn’t let him do that, but I said it was fine.”

I stared at the stuff in my hands, not knowing what to do with it.

Not knowing what to do with any of it.

Chewing the Cud of Good

Thankful for a friend with a husband who makes breakfasts like this (and even more thankful for friends).