Tweet
In the toy aisle at Wal-Mart, where we've gone to buy eye drops, there is a little animatronic cat for sale, and you are invited to try it and see its wonders. Press the button, and though jailed in its pink box by plastic ties, it will rear up on its back legs and paw at the air, and mew ever so sweetly. Perhaps it's a toy for a little girl whose parents won't allow a real pet, or perhaps it's the landlords who won't allow the pet... at any rate, it waits for Christmas. It's already November, after all, and the big day will be here before you know it. Someone will surely buy it and surely it will be loved by whoever receives it.
One hopes.
In the toy aisle at Wal-Mart, someone has pressed the button and the toy cat mews and paws... and it becomes a symbol in my mind of things that will never be. Someone has left it turned on and it paws at the air with no child to delight, and it mews for someone who is not there.
The child will never be there. Out in front of the store, two pairs of children's shoes lie stranded on the pavement of Airport Road. The children they belong to were hit so hard by the SUV that they were literally knocked out of them. One died at the hospital of a crushed chest. One will probably live, but I imagine that's cold comfort to the man from whom the children bolted away, out into the road. I imagine it's as cold a comfort to the driver who could not stop when they ran out in front of him. And I imagine it will chill the rest of us who drive that stretch of road and will see -- for months, perhaps for years -- those little, so little, spray-painted rings that mark the spots where the shoes lie in the road.
Inside the store, the cat is still pawing the air and mewing. No child is coming to play. I'm staring. It's a morbid fascination. They pulled away from the man they were walking with. Perhaps he was their older brother, perhaps their father or grandfather; the news hasn't said yet. Whoever he is, his life changed irrevocably on a November night just after the fall of dark, with the stars wheeling past above the passing clouds, when a slight chilly breeze was blowing. He'll remember all of that forever. The tug, the breaking away, the running -- were they laughing? Was it a game?
The screech, the dull thump, the crunch as the tires went over the little one. The screams, then the scream of the sirens. A phalanx of emergency vehicles blocks the road, washing the night and the store and the parking lot with jagged blue and red lights that are much too harsh for children. The children deserve instead the soft pink color of the box, and the soft plush fur of the toy cat, the soft mews that seem to invite one to hug the toy so close that child and toy alike know they are best friends.
I can't help but watch the cat. Why is this bothering me? It's like I'm feeling someone else's grief. I didn't know the children. I only saw their shoes... but still, I think of toys that won't be played with anymore. I think, perhaps, of toys bought and waiting, dreaming on a shelf, for Christmas that will no longer be needed. I wonder if there will be a mother tonight who will scream until she is so hoarse that she can only groan. I think of so many things ended in an instant on the pavement of Airport Road, and so many things that will never be -- no first day of school, no first friend or best friend, no love, no marriage, no children of their own. Nothing. It's over for the one who owned the smaller of the two pairs of shoes.
How can it all be so perfectly captured by a toy on a shelf, turned on and charming no one? I can't bring myself to turn it off. I only watch until I can't stand it anymore and walk away.
The sounds it makes follow me, and it sounds almost as though it is crying.
Edit: The one that they thought might live is, in fact, brain dead and will likely die today.
One hopes.
In the toy aisle at Wal-Mart, someone has pressed the button and the toy cat mews and paws... and it becomes a symbol in my mind of things that will never be. Someone has left it turned on and it paws at the air with no child to delight, and it mews for someone who is not there.
The child will never be there. Out in front of the store, two pairs of children's shoes lie stranded on the pavement of Airport Road. The children they belong to were hit so hard by the SUV that they were literally knocked out of them. One died at the hospital of a crushed chest. One will probably live, but I imagine that's cold comfort to the man from whom the children bolted away, out into the road. I imagine it's as cold a comfort to the driver who could not stop when they ran out in front of him. And I imagine it will chill the rest of us who drive that stretch of road and will see -- for months, perhaps for years -- those little, so little, spray-painted rings that mark the spots where the shoes lie in the road.
Inside the store, the cat is still pawing the air and mewing. No child is coming to play. I'm staring. It's a morbid fascination. They pulled away from the man they were walking with. Perhaps he was their older brother, perhaps their father or grandfather; the news hasn't said yet. Whoever he is, his life changed irrevocably on a November night just after the fall of dark, with the stars wheeling past above the passing clouds, when a slight chilly breeze was blowing. He'll remember all of that forever. The tug, the breaking away, the running -- were they laughing? Was it a game?
The screech, the dull thump, the crunch as the tires went over the little one. The screams, then the scream of the sirens. A phalanx of emergency vehicles blocks the road, washing the night and the store and the parking lot with jagged blue and red lights that are much too harsh for children. The children deserve instead the soft pink color of the box, and the soft plush fur of the toy cat, the soft mews that seem to invite one to hug the toy so close that child and toy alike know they are best friends.
I can't help but watch the cat. Why is this bothering me? It's like I'm feeling someone else's grief. I didn't know the children. I only saw their shoes... but still, I think of toys that won't be played with anymore. I think, perhaps, of toys bought and waiting, dreaming on a shelf, for Christmas that will no longer be needed. I wonder if there will be a mother tonight who will scream until she is so hoarse that she can only groan. I think of so many things ended in an instant on the pavement of Airport Road, and so many things that will never be -- no first day of school, no first friend or best friend, no love, no marriage, no children of their own. Nothing. It's over for the one who owned the smaller of the two pairs of shoes.
How can it all be so perfectly captured by a toy on a shelf, turned on and charming no one? I can't bring myself to turn it off. I only watch until I can't stand it anymore and walk away.
The sounds it makes follow me, and it sounds almost as though it is crying.
Edit: The one that they thought might live is, in fact, brain dead and will likely die today.
Comment