Mine Eyes - project for Life Writing for Beginners

Mine Eyes

In a first-grade classroom in 1968, Mrs. Grady the music teacher saw me in the last row and let out a horrified gasp.

“WHAT HAPPENED?!”

To answer now: I had been rocking back on my chair and lost my balance, lurching forward so that the corner of my eye hit the edge of the desk. At the time, I burst into tears and burbled “I don’t know” because I was afraid of getting into trouble for not sitting properly.

Mrs. Grady rushed past my classmates, who had all turned to stare, to press a cool, wet paper towel to my eye to help stop the bleeding. I stopped crying and barely spoke after that. As the school principal Mr. Monti walked me down the hallway to his office, I reached up to take his hand. “Oh, you want to hold my hand?” he asked. He seemed surprised. I kept the paper towel against my face on the silent walk home with my mother as she held my hand.

When it happened, maybe we were singing one of the folk songs like Down in the Valley or the one about the bird I’d never heard of, the Kookaburra. Or an anthem like America the Beautiful or Battle Hymn of the Republic. I loved singing that last one. I found out long after that my mother felt it too sad to listen to after Bobby Kennedy’s funeral, when Andy Williams turned the rousing anthem into a poignant lament.

She may have heard it while watching news coverage of Bobby’s last journey from New York to Washington, when millions lined 225 miles of railroad track. I look at the photos now, taken from the train, and see the children who would have been my age and wonder what they remember. Were they in Philadelphia or Baltimore, where thousands were singing of the glory of the coming of the Lord? Had they interrupted their play to stand silently, barefoot by the stream, and salute the casket as it rolled by? Did the losses of that violent year leave unseen scars on those children?

At the hospital my father sat next to me as the doctor stitched the three sutures. Bewildered by the cloth placed over my face, I felt the needle pierce my skin while a tear rolled from my eye, a combination of fear and pain. After the procedure the nurse opened a drawer filled with lollipops and told me I could take as many as I wanted. This was an exciting development for a 6-year-old. I selected three: a purple one for me, and green and red for my teenage brother and sister.

Back at school, I enjoyed the attention of the other kids. “Did it hurt?” “They look like thread.” (A little, and they are.) There was one question I had no answer for: “Why didn’t you take more lollipops?” The schoolroom routine resumed: I sat in reading group learning about Jack and Janet and Tip and Mitten, formed letters and words about cows on yellow paper with wide line spacing, and sang folk songs in Mrs. Grady’s music class.

Nearly 60, I can still see the scar when I look into a magnifying mirror and stretch out the skin next to my right eye: a horizontal line about a quarter inch long crossed by 3 smaller ones. I see it because I know it’s there, I suppose. If pressed, others might notice a slight imperfection no different from other blemishes that come with age.