I like to walk. It helps me in many ways, both physically
and emotionally. It gives me an opportunity to be calm and to
think. There are three places I like to walk. One is through the
prairie preserve by my house, although I don’t walk there when the sun is
beating down; one is along the river branch near my house, because it is very
lush, and canopied by trees, and the other is in the historic district of the
town I live in. That is actually my favorite place to walk because when I do
that I can go by the little cottage that was our very first house when I was a
kid.
Our town is a college town. It is sometimes called “the biggest
small town in America” because while it maintains a certain Midwest provincial
flavor, it is also the hometown of close to 150,000 residents. Still it is a college town. Our old house is
on the grounds and is now the campus radio station. It sits next door to
the president’s mansion, and across the street from some dorms and many
beautiful Victorian houses. It also sits overlooking the football stadium,
which was not there when I was a kid. When I lived here in 1968 we were
surrounded by open meadows. In bed at
night I could see past the Burger King, one of the originals, the Cock Robin, and
then out for miles and miles.
One day as I was out walking around looking at the “painted ladies”
as my mother called them, and I walked by the school, a marble structure, where
my older sister, Melissa, and I went. As I passed by, watched the kids on
the playground, I thought of a funny story that I remembered.
I was in kindergarten. As such, my mother always walked me
to school after lunch, and Melissa, who I was attached to, always walked me
home. Melissa is almost two years older than me so she didn’t like that
she had to do that. It infringed on her burgeoning freedom to be with her
friends and do the things she wanted to do. Melissa was a clever girl
though. She worked hard to make sure I made friends with kids near our
house, and to convince my mother that I would be perfectly fine walking the not
even six blocks home from school. After accomplishing this, with some
difficulty, she was allowed to go to the candy store after school with her
friends, and to leave me to get home on my own.
I did develop close friendships with two kids, Jill and
Mike. We walked home together every day. Jill lived about halfway home in
one of the big houses. Mike lived in an apartment above the hardware
store on the main drag Washington Street alone with his mother. The
three of us had a lot “play dates” at Jill’s house because she had a big yard
and a wishing well that we liked. We also played at my house because we
could run in the fields behind the president’s house. We never played at
Mike’s place though he suggested it all the time. I once asked my mother why
we never went to Mike’s to play. She just said, “Mike lives in a small
apartment and it is right downtown. His mother is also very busy.
She has a lot of callers.” I didn’t know what she meant by that until I
was much older and started to understand those kinds of things. Walking home from school my mother always waited
in the front yard for me. She gave me a
big hug and chided me for not zipping up my jacket.
One Wednesday after school I couldn’t find either Mike or
Jill. I went looking for Melissa and couldn’t find her either. She
had already gone off to the candy store. There was a boy named Denny that was
on the playground, and he said, “I’ll walk home with you, Tommy.” I didn’t know
Denny all that well, and didn't particularly care for him. He was a little,
tow-headed, rat-faced kid who talked rapidly about stuff that didn't always
make any sense. Nevertheless, I figured it was better to walk home with Denny
than it was to walk home alone. On
the way Denny started telling me stories about his brother who was in Viet Nam .
He told me that he was prisoner of war, which could have been quite possibly
true in those days. Then he started telling me some really preposterous
stories about how his brother was strapped to a pole and about to be run
through with thrown spears, and about how the Viet Cong were out looking for
children so they could put them in cages. In retrospect I think that
Denny maybe shouldn’t have ever seen Doctor
Doolittle, or Chitty,
Chitty, Bang, Bang, which were both popular movies then.
It doesn’t matter. All I know is that at that time Denny
scared the hell out of me. When we got to his house he pointed at an
airplane and said “There’s some Viet Cong now. You better get home
quick.” I didn’t know what to do. I started running home.
Every time I saw another plane, I hid behind a tree or under a bush.
Finally, I got so panicked I did what my mom had always told me to do if I ever
thought I was in danger. I ran to a house with the white Helping Hands in the window.
I hammered on the door and rang the
bell. A older woman answered and asked, “Hello, young man. What can I do
for you?” I don’t exactly remember what I said to her, but I think a
close approximation was, “Get the hell out of my way woman! I am being chased
by the Viet Cong!” Probably, what I actually said was something closer to
this: “Arrrrrrgh!” I then dove behind her sofa and curled into a
ball, and refused to come out.
She was a nice woman, talked soothingly to
me and tried to use cookies to coax me to come out from behind what she called
the davenport. She finally got me to tell her my name and where I lived. She
knew who my mother was. She got on the
phone and then seemingly suddenly my mother was there. She knelt on the couch
and peering at me she said, “Tommy, you have to come out. It’s
safe.” I still refused. I did not want to put my family at risk.
At one point my mother saw Melissa
walking home from the candy store and she went on the porch to flag her
in. Melissa asked about what was going on. My mother told her, and she
calmly said, “I can get him out.” She came into the
house and crawled to where I was. She said, “Tommy, it’s safe. I
just bought some pixy stix and I got you a Popeye pez dispenser. You can’t have
them unless you come out and go home.” My sister has always known my weak spots
and how to influence me. At that time in my life I trusted her more than
any adult, so I came out.
After that, while my mother stayed behind
to talk with the nice Helping Hands lady, Melissa and I walked home. As
we got closer, I started to cry. She said “What’s the matter? I
replied “I’m in trouble, aren’t I? Mom and Dad are going to be mad at
me.” She didn’t even skip a beat. She just reached out, and softly pushed
me in the head. “No. Not this time. They’ll talk at you but you’re not in
trouble. It’s going to be OK, Tommy.”
Melissa was right. All my Mom did
was to send me to my room for a rest. All Dad did was bring me some soup and
sandwich and then talk to me, especially about the proper times when you
utilize Helping Hands, and then he left me alone on my bed to deal with my embarrassment.
Later on, Melissa came to my room and asked me if I wanted to go up to the
attic. “Maybe it will make you feel better if we work.” I nodded my head and took her hand.
Our attic was a wonderful place with
lights and windows, and mattresses all over the place where we could jump and
play. Melissa and I went up there all the time and did just that. It was our secret spot. It is the place
where we “worked” and where Melissa gave me the greatest gift I have ever
received...one even better than a Popeye pez dispenser .
Because she knew I wanted it so bad,
Melissa almost daily used took me up to the attic with a bunch of books and
then letter by letter, word by word, and sentence by sentence, teach me how to
read and how to write. She had me copy
letters underneath the letters in the books and sound them out. Both reading and writing were very hard for
me. She said, “You are left-handed, but look at mommy, she writes pretty. You
will too. And once you get the hang of
reading by yourself in your head, you’ll love it. ” She then would read to me
one of my favorite stories Joe, the Bear
and Sam, the Mouse before Dad or Mom would shoo us back downstairs.
It would take a long time for me to get
the hang of things, because what we didn’t know until I was in fourth grade was
that I am dyslexic. Melissa didn’t know about that at all until just a short
while ago, because it was ingrained in me that you didn’t talk about those kinds
of things. My mother feared stigmas and
she passed it on to me. It was when I
saw the success of Melissa’s son, Patrick, who also struggled like I did that I
started talking about it. I probably should’ve sooner. Fortunately Pat found
his niche in art and I found my niche in reading, writing and speaking. Both of
us owe that to our parents. I particularly owe it to Melissa who kept working
with me, never gave up on me, and helped me to achieve the gifts I now have.
Melissa has always been a caregiver, a
teacher, and a person with “helping hands.” She’s a wonderful wife and mother,
and someone who I never stopped being attached to. We have always been great
friends, shared classes, double dates, and meatloaf sandwiches in the corner
diner on Green and Wright in Champaign when we were in college. I am extremely thankful
for that. She has always been the person who I turn to and trust in my life
when I need it most. Aside from my wife and children, she is one who I go to when
I need comfort or solace. She is the
first person I called when I found out I had Parkinson’s. I still call her first when something great or
something bad happens in my life. Sometimes I just call her to remember who
played what character in a TV show or movie, or to remember someone’s birthday. Sometimes I just call her to hear her voice.
I guess helping hands aren’t always
displayed on windows to lead you to refuge…they’re just there always.
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