A Little Mother's Day Trauma

Traumatic experiences stick with you throughout your life. No matter how old you get they never go away. It's as if a traumatic event in your childhood places a bookmark in your memories. A dark and indelible bookmark. I've had a few, but I think this is the earliest one I can remember.

During one of my early years in grade school--like possibly 2nd grade--we had a class project:  We grew a watermelon plant. Each of us had our own little square light yellow and white Smith Brothers Dairy milk carton, trimmed down so it was about 2 inches tall. They were all neatly lined up in the window of our classroom, each with our names proudly written on them. The idea of the project was to create a plant that we grew from a seed, nurturing and caring for them ourselves to give to our mom on Mother's Day.

We had lovingly placed a watermelon seed into the rich, dark brown Algona dirt just as we had been shown by the teacher. Every day we gave our plant a little water and a little love.  And every day we dreamed excitedly of that special day when a sprout would appear. When little buds of green finally made their tentative appearance we could scarcely contain our excitement! I just knew that my little baby plant was the best, as I'm sure every other kid did about their own plant.

At last, the day had arrived: Mother's Day!

It was finally time to present the gift to my mother. I was so proud and excited--I could hardly wait to see the look on her face when I gave it to her! I walked the several blocks I had to walk each day, carefully cradling my mother's gift of life that I had so lovingly raised from a seedling. I was probably less than 100 feet from home when I tripped and fell--scattering my precious gift all over the edge of the road. I was devastated. I cried and cried, walking the rest of the way into the yard and into the house, still crying. Through all the blubbering and the tears, mom managed to coax the events of the tragedy from me. I led her to it, where she scooped it all up and put it back into its carton as best she could.

Thank goodness mothers are so good at picking up the pieces.