I was finishing up a home call one late autumn afternoon. As I pulled out onto the narrow road skirting the school I heard the school bell ring. I braked, put the car in reverse and sidled back to the sidewalk. It was a lovely day. Warming sun and autumn fragrances danced on a thin breeze. I turned to look at the schoolyard, but my sight was focused on memories, years old. I couldn't recall the last time I'd heard the old fashioned school bell. It had been childhoods ago--that much I was certain of. My body was sitting in the car, behind the wheel, but my senses had transported me a long distance from the present. I inhaled and I could smell sun-warmed skin on a summer afternoon. Gangly limbs akimbo as a group of children played tether ball. Goofy grins from several of my schoolmates as they took turns throwing a small beanbag and jumping to another hop scotch square. Out of the corner of my eye I catch the flurried movement of kids scrambling on jungle gyms, merry-go-rounds, swings, and monkey bars. They were the school's younger pupils, playing in their designated area of the yard. Overhead, a shiny crow caws out, as if directing the play of the little humans below his perch. Over near some blooming shrubbery, fat bumble bees saw the air, up and down, as the bees' thickly rounded bodies wobble among the sweet-scented flowers. Hanging damp and animated, the fragrance of newly cut lawn lingers in the air, fills my breath with its clean aroma. Some one comes up from behind and pounds me on the shoulder, hard enough to send me lurching forward. I clench my hands into fists and spin around ready to spit venom. The words lose direction in my mouth and all that comes out is the collective sigh of the words not used. There, with red hair gleaming, with freckles looking darker on his pale flesh in the sunlight, and a crooked grin stretched across his face, stood Jimmy. My first crush since Kindergarten. Past a grin he said, "Do you want to play?" Jimmy held a basketball and gestured to the blacktop court. I goggled at him, nodding in the affirmative. Basketball wasn't my game but I loved to throw the ball and watch it drop through the netted hoop. I had a few "trick shots" that every once in a while I could execute perfectly. We laughed and jumped and ran. While I bent over to catch my breath I could hear the echoed thwang of the basketball as Jimmy bounced it on the asphalt behind me. Just as I was straightening up the school bell rang. Everyone scrambled to pick up their possessions and equipment, then off to their classrooms they went. I didn't follow them. I drifted for a while on scattered memories. Lunches in the cafeteria--the same place we had our concerts and watched educational films. And on those nights we had school carnivals the cafeteria was the place they held the cake walks, and played musical chairs. Another tolling of the school bell and the students swarmed out of their classrooms, past the metal fence and over to the crosswalk where students given the honor of being Crossing Guards monitored the foot traffic. Kids who had parents waiting for them ran over to their cars. The rest of us walked home. Home was less than a block away and took no time at all, even when I dawdled. Once at home, no thought of school entered my mind with the exception of required homework. The bell that regulated the important intervals in my school days held no significance once away from it. And so it has been now, for many years--no thought of the school bell had I entertained...until I was parked next to the elementary school, and the bell rang out. ? Copyright 2005 by Kathy Pippig Harris |
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