Birds and Bees

When I was a high school freshman In 1977, the P.E. teacher encouraged me to take what she called a health class. Since I was always interested in the subject, I agreed to give it a try. It turned out to be a class for girls only, and when I walked into the room, someone snickered and said, “So you want to learn about sex, huh?”

For the first couple of days, the instructor covered basic health issues. On the third day, she gave us THE DEFINITION. I remember her words as she spoke and wrote them on the black board. “Sexual intercourse is the insertion of the penis into the vagina.” I was mortified. I never returned to that class.

Later, Dad told me and my younger brother Andy that sexual intercourse was something done by a man and a woman who love each other, and that’s how we were created. When I was a senior, I was studying Spanish. It occurred to me that song lyrics didn’t provide graphic descriptions of love making. I decided to write a song using the dreadful words I learned during my freshman year but put them in Spanish and have the rest of the song in English. When I broached the subject with Andy, he said, “You’d better be careful what you say. Somebody might think you’re telling him to put his penis on the end of a fork.”

The next day at school, I set to work. To my disappointment, I couldn’t find the words penis or vagina in my Braille English/Spanish dictionary. What was I to do now? Since I didn’t feel comfortable asking my male Spanish teacher for help, I came up with an alternate plan. Instead of writing in Spanish, “Put your penis in my vagina, my darling,” I would write in Spanish, “I don’t want to be a virgin.”

My dictionary had the word virgin so I wrote my first line, but that’s as far as it went. It didn’t sound as romantic as “Put your penis in my vagina, my darling.” If I couldn’t write that in English or Spanish, I wouldn’t write a love song at all. Although my parents would have helped me find those words in Spanish, I didn’t tell them or anyone about my project. It was too embarrassing. I realize now that wouldn’t have been nearly as humiliating as if I actually did it and got pregnant.

I recently discovered the Spanish translation of the words penis (penne) and vagina. (vagina)But over the decades, I have matured from a curious teen-ager to a sensible woman. I am happily married, and my husband and I have discussed sexual intercourse. Since I take sex seriously, I doubt I’ll write that Spanish love song.

What were your experiences with sex education? Did you take a class? Did your parents give you the facts of life? Have you ever written a love song? Please tell me about it. I’d love to hear from you.

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome

http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com

1974

This was our first full year in Sheridan, Wyoming, where we moved from Tucson, Arizona, during the summer of 1973. I was twelve years old, and my younger brother Andy was five. Grandpa Johnson died a couple of years earlier, and Dad felt obligated to run the family’s coin-operated machine business. After staying with Grandma for a couple of months, we found a house, just in time for us to start school.

The two-bedroom white structure was at the top of a hill, and Linden School was at the bottom. For the first time in my life, I could walk to and from school. In the past, I’d been driven, and I’d read stories about other kids walking and wished I were one of them. Now, I was, and it gave me a great sense of independence. I often walked to and from school with friends, and at other times, I walked alone. I rarely walked with Andy because he had his own friends who accompanied him to and from school every day.

In the winter, I slid down the hill, often landing on my rear end, but like any other kid, I got to my feet, dusted the snow off my pants, and continued walking. Andy often sledded down the hill with his friends. I tried it once or twice, but I wasn’t impressed because I was afraid of falling off the sled. In January of 1974, we were sent off to school wearing new coats, hats, mittens, and boots that we’d received for Christmas.

I got two other gifts that year that I really liked. One was a remote control box that Dad installed in my room and connected, along with a speaker, to a jukebox in the basement. Unlike the jukeboxes he serviced, this one was rigged so I wouldn’t have to put any money in it. I could play it any time I wanted.

My friends and I listened to such songs as “The Lord’s Prayer,” “Seasons in the sun,” and “The Streak.” Andy and I took “The Streak” a bit further. We ran through the house naked yelling, “Ethel, don’t look!”

The other gift I received was an electric blanket. My room was once part of the garage, and it was chilly during the winter. Although there was a heat register, it didn’t always work. It was nice to climb into a warm bed on those cold winter nights.

It was in 1974 that I first developed an ambition to be a singer. I started singing and accompanying myself on the piano. In February, I entered a local talent competition where I sang “El Condor Pasa”. I didn’t win, but I didn’t give up. I entered the contest every year and finally won first place during my sophomore year in high school.

Andy’s room was in the basement, and it contained, among other things, bunk beds. One night during the winter of 1974, he fell off the top bunk and cut his head. Mother and Dad rushed him to the hospital, leaving me alone with my imagination. What would happen to him? Would they cut off his head and give him a new one? What would his brain be like?

When they returned home with Andy, he was sleeping peacefully in Mother’s arms. A white bandage encircled his head. Mother said he had six stitches, and that was that.

In the spring, Andy was playing with matches near an abandoned shack when the structure caught fire. The police picked him up on suspicion of arson, and Mother and Dad had to bail him out. Dad asked the police to put Andy in a cell for a while. In the meantime, I was home alone, again a victim of my imagination. I pictured Andy being handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police car and thrown into a jail cell. I developed the idea that they might arrest me for being his sister. Since this happened during the day, I called my friends next door, two girls about my age, and they came and stayed with me until Mother and Dad came home with Andy. My brother told me that in the jail cell, besides a couple of bunk beds, there was a rotten peanut butter sandwich. I used this story later on in my novel, We Shall Overcome.

My sixth grade year at Linden School was different from any of my years in Arizona. All the grades, except for kindergarten, had two classrooms, each with their own teachers. Mr. Mathis, my homeroom teacher, taught English, spelling, and social studies and read to us each day. Mr. Smith taught math and science. The last period of each day was set aside for studying.

A Braille writer was set up in the hall outside Mr. Mathis’s classroom, and I used this to do written assignments during the school day. At home, I read the assignments to either Mother or Dad who wrote them in print, and I gave them to the teachers the next day. Some of my textbooks were in Braille, and other materials were read to me either by another student at school or by Mother or Dad at home.

Soon after I started the sixth grade, the school board bought me a closed-circuit television reading machine which was set up in Mr. Mathis’s classroom, and I used it to read printed material. I hated it at first because my eyes kept getting tired, but once I got used to it, I loved it. The first book I read was The Wizard of Oz, still one of my favorite stories today.

At Linden School, book learning was supplemented with hands on activities. In Mr. Mathis’s English class, we produced a yearly school newspaper. I was assigned to interview the kindergarten teacher, along with another student, and write an article about what her class was doing. To be more frank, I volunteered for this job so I could check up on Andy, but I didn’t see him because the interview took place while his class was at recess. When I introduced myself to his teacher, she asked, “Are you Andy’s sister?”

“Yes,” I answered, but I wasn’t surprised when she said no more about him.

In Mr. Smith’s science class, we built rockets and launched them. We assembled the rockets in teams of two. I was paired with Robert who was glad to do all the work while I observed. I felt inept when it came to building things, and I wasn’t encouraged to help with the process.

In the spring of 1974, we took an all-day field trip to some point outside of town to shoot the rockets. Mr. Smith rigged some sort of launching apparatus that was connected to his pick-up truck. Although other teams’ rockets soared above the field, ours never left the ground. Several times, we yelled, “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, blast off!” I pushed the button on the apparatus. Nothing happened.

The sixth grade had weekly business meetings which incorporated officers. I was elected secretary. I used a cassette machine to record meetings, wrote the minutes in Braille, and read them aloud.

When I look back on 1974, I smile. It was the year of my first walk in the snow, my first attempts at journalism and rocketry, and my first job as a secretary. It was also the year of Andy’s first incarceration and his first visit to a hospital emergency room. It was a memorable year because it was the first year of our new life in Sheridan, Wyoming.

After my husband suffered his first stroke, we moved into a house down the street from Linden School. A child development center now takes its place, but the hill is still there, and in the winter, we occasionally hear the happy cries of sledding children. My life has turned a full circle.

What were you doing in 1974? Did you have any favorite songs or activities? What was school like for you? Tell me about it. I’d love to hear from you.

I leave you now with a link to a recording of me singing “El Condor Pasa”. The link will only be available for about a week so enjoy!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15213189/el%20condor%20pasa.mp3

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome

http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com

abbie@samobile.net

Mr. Smith's Mistake

During the 1940’s when my mother was in the eighth grade, her teacher, Mrs. Gammel, was fond of terrorizing her class with a ruler. When I was in the sixth grade in a public school in Sheridan, Wyoming, in 1974, one of my teachers, whom I’ll call Mr. Smith, taught math, not my best subject. Instead of trying to help me understand long division and other mathematical concepts, he threatened that if I didn’t improve, he would hit me with an eighteen-inch ruler.

One day, he kept me after school to work on some problems. When I ran into trouble, I asked him for help. “Maybe I should hit you right now,” he said, as he reached into his desk drawer.

At that moment, the school secretary entered the room. “Abbie, your mother’s on the phone,” she said. Relieved, I followed her to the office. After that, Mr. Smith never threatened me again.

He left the elementary school in Sheridan after my sixth grade year. I heard he was driving a truck. He eventually ascended to the position of principal at a school in Casper, Wyoming, approximately 150 miles south of Sheridan.

Years later, an article about me appeared in a newsletter that was produced by the Wyoming Department of Education and distributed to schools and visually impaired people living in the state. At the time, I was working as an activities assistant in a nursing home. I received a letter from Mr. Smith. I was surprised because it was the first time I’d heard from him since the sixth grade.

In his letter, he said that after reading the article, he admired me and hoped that I remembered him. I wrote him back and said that yes, I definitely remembered the eighteen-inch ruler, After putting the letter in the mail, I thought that would be the end of it.

To my astonishment, he replied, saying that through the years, he realized that he hadn’t been a good teacher. “Corporal punishment isn’t always the answer,” he said. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Since he didn’t have my home address, he sent his first letter to me in care of the nursing home mentioned in the article. I had a great relationship with Joan, my supervisor, and since I didn’t want her to think I was in the habit of receiving personal mail at work, I mentioned our correspondence. Jean, one of my co-workers, happened to be in the office when we were talking, and she said, “I’ve never heard of an eighteen-inch ruler. I don’t think there is such a thing.”

“Oh, that’s just too funny,” said Joan. “Maybe the next time I have to go to Casper, you can come with me, and I can drop you off at his school.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said. “I could walk into his office and say, ‘Okay, Mr. Smith, I see your eighteen-inch ruler and raise you a forty-six inch white cane’”We all laughed.

But after giving the issue some thought, I came to the conclusion that teachers make mistakes like everyone else. Mr. Smith never followed through with his threat to hit me with the ruler. Since I didn’t see it, it may not have existed.

On the other hand, my mother was a victim in the eighth grade. I wonder if Mrs. Gammel ever saw the error of her ways.

Is there such a thing as an eighteen-inch ruler? Do you have memories of being taught reading, writing, and math with the help of a hickory stick or other implement? Are you a teacher who used corporal punishment and now regrets it? Tell me about it. I’d love to hear from you

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome

http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com

Leaving Comments

Some have had difficulty leaving comments on my blog, and this has been a constant source of aggravation for months. Finally, a friend who also has a blog on this site figured it out with the help of a tech guru. My blog is now set up so anyone can leave comments. After typing your comment in the appropriate field, select “Anonymous” from the drop-down list and then press the Submit button. You may need to press this button several times before the comment goes through. If you have a Google or other account in the drop-down list, you can select that option, but for some reason, it doesn’t always work. Of course, if you select “Anonymous,” when your comment is displayed, it will say, “Anonymous wrote…” But if you sign your name in the comment field, I’ll know who you are and in some cases where you live.

So give it a try. Talk to me about your favorite soft drink, or share your thoughts on corporal punishment, or comment on any of my other posts. I’ve also set up my blog so I’ll receive e-mail messages when someone leaves a comment, and I’ll respond to comments as quickly as possible. If you still have trouble with the comment form, please e-mail me. I’d love to hear from you.

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author ofWe Shall Overcome

http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com

Moxie Versus Dr. Pepper

I learned something new this week. Every year, the town of Lisbon Falls, Maine, holds an annual festival to celebrate moxie. This carbonated beverage is only regionally popular so that’s why I’ve never heard of it. One of the first soft drinks to be mass-produced in the United States, it was introduced in 1876. It’s not as sweet as most soft drinks. Some people think it’s bitter. It became the official soft drink of Maine on May 10^th, 2005.

On the other hand, Dr. Pepper, my favorite soft drink, was introduced in 1885 and was first marketed in the U.S. in 1904 and is sold in Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. As far as I know, it’s not the official beverage of any state, and there’s no festival to celebrate it. If you haven’t drunk Dr. Pepper, I can’t tell you what it tastes like because the flavor is so unique.

The 2011 Moxie Festival in Lisbon Falls, Maine, was held July 8^th through the 10^th. Activities included a fireworks display, parade, and a Moxie chugging contest, to name a few. According to Maine author Jim Baumer’s blog, this year’s festival might be the last. It’s no wonder since it attracts twenty to thirty thousand people, and only a handful of volunteers put it on every year.

I wish Dr. Pepper could be designated Wyoming’s official beverage, and a Dr. Pepper festival could be held here inSheridan. However, I don’t have the time and energy to coordinate such a festival so I’ll be content to just drink it. I love Dr. Pepper so much that I’m going to post a poem I wrote about it.

ODE TO DR. PEPPER

I love to swallow its cold carbonation,

feel it come back into my mouth in the form of a belch.

Oh, that feels so good!

I drink it in mid afternoon.

It helps me get through the day.

I sometimes consume it in the evening,

when I’m sleepy, and it’s too early for bed.

In the good old days,

I drank a lot of it,

just what the doctor ordered.

Now, the doctor says it has too much sugar

so I limit my consumption to one or two cans a day.

What would I do without it?

Do you have a favorite soft drink? Please feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail. I’d love to hear from you.

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome

http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com

abbie@samobile.net

The Button

“Abbie, your top button is undone,” said my fifth grade teacher at the Arizona State School for the Deaf & Blind (ASDB) in Tucson, a woman I’ll call Mrs. Jones.

On the days I had P.E. class, Mother let me wear clothes I could take off and put on easily since we had to change into gym suits. Today, I wore a dress because I was supposed to have a piano lesson instead of P.E. class, but the piano teacher was sick, and the P.E. teacher ordered us into our gym suits as usual. In the locker room, I found someone to help with the buttons on the back of my dress since they were hard to reach. But now, here I was, with school ending and a button having been missed.

“I can’t do it myself,” I told Mrs. Jones.

“Yes, you can, and you’re not leaving until you do.”

With a sigh, I reached behind me. The button and the hole were small, and my arms grew tired before I could finish the job, and I had to put them down. All around me were the sounds of the school day ending, children chattering in the hall, doors opening and closing. Gradually, the building grew quiet, and here I was, struggling with a missed button. In about an hour, Mother would pick me up at the little girls’ dormitory, but I wouldn’t be there because I’d be here, trying to button a stupid button, and she would worry. This thought caused me to panic, and I struggled again and again to fasten the button but to no avail.

After sitting at her desk and watching me for a few minutes, Mrs. Jones rose and said, “I’m going to write a letter to your mother about this.“ Her threat didn’t alarm me because Mother understood that there were some things I couldn’t do for myself, but when the teacher left the room, I gave in to my feelings of panic and despair, collapsed at my desk, let my tears flow.

After I calmed down and looked around the empty classroom, an idea came to me. I rose, picked up my books, crept to the open doorway. I looked left and right. Nobody was coming. Down the hall, someone was typing, and I assumed it was Mrs. Jones,, writing that dreaded letter. I sneaked in the opposite direction toward the main entrance. I encountered no one. Once outside, I hurried to the dormitory and found someone to deal with the offending button.

When Mrs. Jones arrived about half an hour later, I was watching TV with the other girls. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

I panicked and reached for the button and remembered it was already fastened. “Look, I did it. You said I couldn’t leave until I buttoned it, and I buttoned it.”

“I just finished writing a letter to your mother,” said Mrs. Jones. “Now, I’m going to write some more.” She turned and flounced out of the room.

The next day, Mother confronted Mrs. Jones in the hall outside our classroom. As we sat at our desks, we heard them yelling but couldn’t hear the words. “What are they blabbering about?” one of the boys asked. I said nothing.

Later, I learned that when Mother told Mrs. Jones she didn’t appreciate her method of teaching, Mrs. Jones threatened Mother that if she continued to make waves, I would be put in a special class for slow learners. This prompted Mother and Dad along with other parents to attempt to remove their children from the state school and place them in public schools.

“You’re not coming here tomorrow,” said Mother a few days later when she picked me up after school. “You’re going to look at Julie and Ashley’s school.”

Julie and Ashley lived with their parents in the house across the street. They were sighted and went to a public school. Julie was my age, and Ashley was a few years younger. Their younger brother Thomas was the same age as my younger brother, and we played together after school and on weekends.

“Good! I don’t have to go on that stupid Girl Scout hike tomorrow.”

“That’s right, and if you like Julie and Ashley’s school, you won’t have to go back to ASDB ever again.”

The next morning when I climbed out of the car at theMiles Exploratory Learning Center, (ELC) I heard the happy cries of children in the playground. There were several play areas on the school for the blind’s campus, but none of them were located directly in front of the school building. The playground nearest the school was in an enclosed courtyard, and when I was in the first and second grades, our classes had access to this playground. From the third grade on, we didn’t have recess so we rarely used it. I never heard children playing in the playground when I arrived at school.

As Dad and I walked toward ELC, a bell rang. This surprised me because I didn’t hear the bell ring from outside the school building at ASDB. At the sound, the other kids dropped what they were doing and hurried to the entrance, eager to begin the school day. At ASDB, there was none of this enthusiasm. Resigned, we walked into our classrooms, sat down at our desks, and waited for our teachers.

ELC consisted of three class groups called bases Base E was kindergarten through second grade. Base L, where I was sent, was third fourth and fifth grades. Base C was sixth grade. Base L had three connecting rooms for math, science, and language arts. Students in this base were assigned to one of these areas as a home room.

At the start of the school day, students gathered in their respective home rooms. I was temporarily assigned to the science area. Mrs. Gilbert was a pleasant woman, and I liked her right away. One thing she said that morning has been stuck in my mind to this day. “Paper airplanes are fun but not on school paper.” At ASDB, we did crafts projects but never paper airplanes. I thought this was a cool idea, but I never followed through.

After the mandatory home room meeting, students could visit any area of the base they liked as long as they filled out a time slip stating what time they were in each area and how long they stayed. There was no set curriculum. Students could learn what they wanted. Besides textbooks, there were educational tapes, and in the math and science areas, hands-on activities such as counting rice into different size Dairy Queen cups.

The school also had an art room for drawing only, a crafts room, and a library, all of which could be visited at any time during the school day as long as students checked in and out of these areas. The cafeteria also served as an auditorium. There was a stage at one end of the room, and when classes weren’t in session, students could play records and dance. After lunch each day, there was choir practice followed by folk dancing and drama classes which anyone could attend but which weren’t required. There were no bells except to signal the beginning and end of the school day and the lunch period. Students were free to do what they chose.

At ASDB, we had to do reading followed by math followed by English followed by library or music period etc. Bells rang to signal the beginning and end of each period. We stayed in the same classroom and had the same teacher for everything except for physical education, music, and library periods. The teachers told us what to do, and we couldn’t choose what we wanted to learn.

Lunch was also different. At ASDB, when the bell rang for lunch, we went to our respective dormitories, even the day students. We put on aprons that tied at the neck, lined up, and marched across the street to the cafeteria. Once inside the vast lunchroom, we stood behind our assigned chairs and waited for the blessing to be said. This was done by one of us who volunteered, using a microphone in the center of the room. After that, we all sat down at our places, and students at the head and foot of each table passed around food and drinks.

At ELC, we lined up outside the cafeteria when the bell rang for lunch. Instead of walking to assigned tables, we went through a serving line. We collected silverware, napkins, trays of food, and cartons of milk. Before doing this, we paid a lady a small amount of money or gave her a ticket. When we got our food, we could sit wherever we wanted. There was no blessing. One thing I didn’t like about this arrangement was that there were no seconds which meant I couldn’t have more chocolate pudding. Fortunately, a girl at my table offered me hers.

When school was dismissed, I was smiling, as I climbed into Dad’s car. “Can I come back here tomorrow?”

“Of course you can, honey.”

I soon settled into the routine at ELC. I was permanently assigned to Mrs. Osterman’s home room, the math area. By some miraculous twist of fate, I was able to receive some textbooks in Braille. Other material was read to me either by other students or the teacher who also helped me fill out the time slips. I often visited the library where I curled up on the couch in a corner and read a Braille book. One time, I sat down with the language arts teacher and made a tape in which I read her a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson in Braille, and we talked about it.

At the end of the school year, I played Dorothy in a production of “The Wizard of Oz.” This was improvisational theater which meant we made up the lines as we went along based on what we heard in the movie. It was great because I didn’t have to worry about reading and memorizing lines. Back then, I actually believed that a cyclone picked up Dorothy’s house and carried it to Oz, and she was able to get back home by clicking her heels together three times and saying, “There’s no place like home.” This was because I couldn’t see what was going on in the movie, and my parents didn’t tell me the truth until a year or so later. If I had remembered what Dorothy says at the end of the movie about looking no further than your own back yard to find your heart’s desire, I would have said that during my performance. When you’re a kid, you don’t always think about the moral of a story.

A girl in my home room I’ll call Nancy said to me one day, “I don’t like this school. You don’t learn anything.”

It may be true that in an unstructured learning environment, a student may not be motivated to learn, but if you become involved in things that interest you, you’ll acquire knowledge. At ELC, I not only learned the words to “Over the Rainbow,,” but I also discovered that you have to look further than your own back yard to find a world of possibilities. Through the years, I've also come to realize that it’s not a sin to ask for help buttoning that unreachable top button on the back of your dress.

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome

http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com

abbie@samobile.net

Child Psychology

In my last post, I shared my experiences as a recipient of corporal punishment. Here’s a look at the subject from a different perspective. This story is pure fiction. Since I never had kids, I didn’t have experiences to draw on. The idea came to me in a dream one night a few years ago, and I went to my computer and took it from there. Enjoy!

CHILD PSYCHOLOGY

Whack! Whack! Whack! The palm of my hand slapped my little boy’s pajama-clad bottom a few times while he screamed and writhed in pain and frustration. I picked him up and carried him upstairs to his room. He continued to cry. I spoke not a word as I removed his soiled pajamas and dressed him in clean clothes. He was sniffling as I said, “Now, are you ready to come downstairs and eat your breakfast like a civilize human being?”

His crying resumed in earnest. “Fine,” I said in disgust as I turned toward the door. “You can just stay there and cry. Don’t come downstairs until you’re ready to stop crying and behave.”

In the doorway, I stopped short. At the top of the stairs stood my neighbor Brenda. I braced for another round of negative criticism. “I heard Dylan screaming. Is he okay?” she asked.

“He’s fine,” I said as I pulled the door closed. “He just needs some time to himself.”

“Oh, Cheryl, did you spank him again?” she asked, her eyebrows raised in disapproval.

With a sigh, I answered, “I won’t deny it, but he needs to learn to control himself. You should see the mess in the kitchen.”

“It can’t be that bad. He’s only two. What do you expect?”

“I know how old my kid is. I turned my back for one minute, and there was milk everywhere, all over the table, all over him, on the floor. I swear to God this kid is the mess maker from Hell.”

“Okay, I was only trying to help,” she said, as she turned to descend the stairs. “I don’t have time to argue with you. Now that I know Dylan’s okay, I’ll go about my business.” She hurried down the stairs, and I heard the screen door slam.

Fuming, I rushed to the kitchen. I had a million things to do today, and I didn’t have time for this. Ever since Brenda moved into the apartment next door a few weeks ago, she criticized the way I disciplined Dylan. Whenever I spanked him, she appeared,, acting as if she thought the boy was involved in a serious accident. When she learned the truth, she uttered her famous line. “He’s only two. What do you expect?”

Brenda had no children of her own. She claimed to have a degree in child psychology. That didn’t give her as much knowledge about child-rearing as the actual experience, I thought, as I wiped the table, Dylan’s chair, and the floor around it with a wet rag.

The mess wasn’t that big. Dylan’s pajamas had absorbed most of the milk. There was a puddle on the table and maybe a few drops had splashed onto the chair and the floor. My anger evaporated, as I sank into a chair and placed my head in my hands.

I reflected on the events of the morning. Dylan was sitting at the table, chattering as he ate his cereal. I was washing dishes and thinking about the day ahead and not paying much attention to him. I heard the clatter of a plastic glass overturning and the dribbling sound of liquid being spilled. I turned around, and as I suspected, Dylan had upset his milk glass.

As I relived this scene, memories of my own childhood came flooding back to me, memories of times when my own mother spanked me for knocking over a glass of milk or spilling spaghetti down my front. At the time, I was a few years older than Dylan. Perhaps I should have known better, but the humiliation still hurt. Tears flowed down my cheeks, as I sat recalling these scenes. Like Dylan, I was playing while eating to keep occupied because my mother, like me, was too busy. I was about six or seven. Dylan was only two. Maybe Brenda was right.

Most weekday mornings were the same old routine. My husband left early for work before Dylan was out of bed. So it was my responsibility to get him up, dressed, and ready for the day. Although I was a stay at home mom, my days were filled with cleaning or shopping or trips to the gym or various volunteer obligations while Dylan was in preschool. So most mornings, I was preoccupied with the day’s schedule.

I blew my nose and shook my head, as I tried to remember the last time I sat down and ate breakfast with Dylan and talked to him about what he was thinking or what he wanted to do that day. Usually on weekends, the three of us ate a late breakfast together, but when had I recently taken the time to enjoy the meal with my son?

With determination, I marched upstairs to Dylan’s room. I opened the door a crack and peeked inside. He was lying on the floor face down, but he turned to me when he heard the door creak. The curtains were drawn, and in the dim light, I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was hurting. I turned on the overhead light and crossed to where he lay, kneeling by his side. “I’m sorry, Mommy,” he said with a note of desperation in his voice.

“I’m sorry, too,” I said, stroking his hair. “I shouldn’t have spanked you. We all make mistakes. I spilled plenty of milk when I was your age.”

Dylan gazed at me in astonishment, as I took him in my arms and held him, drinking in the scent of the shampoo I’d used on his hair the night before. Fresh sobs erupted from him, shaking his shoulders as he snuggled against me. “It’s okay,” I said, as I rocked him and stroked his back. A minute later, I said, “Why don’t we go downstairs and eat breakfast together, you and me?”

“Can we really?” he asked, as he gaped at me in amazement.

“Sure, why not?” I said, rising to my feet and pulling him to a standing position. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

Hand in hand, we returned to the kitchen. A while later when Brenda appeared with a social worker from the Department of Child Protective Services, Dylan and I were sitting at the kitchen table, eating cream of wheat, laughing, and talking. “You’re right, Brenda,” I said. “He’s only two. What should I expect?”

THE END

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com

abbie@samobile.net