Linoleum Lessons

I remember my grandfather laying linoleum to run in the hallway from the front of the house to the back door leading to the yard.

The gray glutinous adhesive was applied first; then would come the linoleum.

But I want to go in the yard and play. How to get across the gray layer of slime?

My beloved aunt offers to carry me since she plans to sunbathe on the lawn. I just need to wait a minute. l don’t know how she will navigate this gray river but her glamour makes her invincible to me.

Dressed in very short shorts, with a tube top, and her hair upswept in a bandana, wearing the high heels she always wears, she seems the epitome of sophistication.

But I decide I can’t wait.

One step, and I am floundering in gray ooze.

The odd thing is that I am not bothered. I keep trying to get up and every time I fall into more of this engulfing stickiness. Finally, I just give into it.

(In later years, when I am pregnant with twins, I will have a similar experience. Attempting to get to work in a blizzard, I call a taxi. But as we ride, it soon becomes apparent that conditions are too serious to continue, When the cab drives me back home, I exit the taxi and fall into a high snow bank. It is a very gentle fall, what it would probably feel like falling into a huge marshmallow. I am not at all concerned about the babies I am carrying—this is all happening in slow motion and is clearly not dangerous. I find it tremendously funny not to be able to get up. Each attempt to rise throws me back into the snow bank. I find myself laughing at my predicament. Finally, the taxi driver rescues me.)

The next thing I remember from my linoleum caper is being put in a large kitchen tub—fortunately my grandparents’ old house had a capacious kitchen sink—and rubbed with turpentine to get clean.

Nobody seems angry about this, and while sometimes I actually wish my mother would become irrationally angry with me over minor things the way other mothers do—it would prove she loves me—nevertheless I find my family’s understanding comforting. I need to remember the good of my childhood along with the bad.

Now I have a disease that makes it difficult for me keep my balance. And I resolve to accept it, hoping that a higher power will step in as my aunt did and rescue me.

And I pray that I can give myself up to this helplessness gracefully and thankfully, just as I did as a child, and fall into God’s arms.