Just Grow up

“Grow up”, my mother said to me when I was 5. I couldn’t count how many times I’d heard that: the first time I had to sleep by myself in the dark room without a nightlight, the first time I remember falling down and skinning my knee, the first time I begged her to stay with me when she left me in the car while she went into her friend’s house for what she called just-a-minute, (and wasn’t), the first time I asked for a puppy for my birthday, the first day of kindergarten when I was afraid to go through the big doors alone. She probably said it when I was born. When she prayed at night I could imagine her asking God for this simple little wish, to make the time go quickly, to help me grow up fast. Every month she measured me against the door frame and sighed that I had grown so little. I used to stand in front of the refrigerator and try to reach up to touch the top. I tried to see my head going up up up until it grew out the roof and was out among the trees and the stars. I stood very tall and straight. When I was told I was only in the 68^th percentile for growth I knew I was failing. Then a good thought came to me. I could bunch up socks in my shoes and get taller, but they made me fall out of my shoes. Every day at school I hung from the monkey bars, swinging like a bat, and my arms ached. I had a friend pull on my legs. I gave my friend the quarter I found on the street, and we were both happy. I knew the trick to growth had to happen in my legs or my neck. I once tried to swing out on the monkey bars to hook my chin and hang that way, but my head snapped back and for weeks it hurt every time I turned my head.

I just continued to crimp mother’s style; the 50’s rickrack pockets sewed on the yellow flowers printed on the dress that matched her yellow sunglasses and the yellow Chrysanthemum behind her ear picked from a neighbor’s yard. She was tall and graceful. I was little and felt like a left over, wearing my cousin’s dress, way too large for me and I wore it under threat of harm if I came home from school with it dirty or torn. At school I discovered a tree that had a limb I could hang on and every lunch hour for a year I hung saying “grow, grow, grow” to my body.

The particular day I am now remembering we were on the way to the pediatrician’s office because once again my asthma had interfered in class and therefore with mother’s coffee and gossip group and she had to pick me up and take me to the doctor’s office.

As we got out of the 1955 Buick someone in the parking lot told my mother how cute I was, that I looked a lot like her. She and I cringed. To insult my mother should have landed that person in jail. She, the glittering sun struck queen, I the ragged little mouse, hopping nervously from foot to foot, my bitten lips, my sparse hair. “You were so bald as a baby I used to scotch tape a bow on your head” she told me for the hundredth time. And now I had humiliated her again with my irritating existence.

The pediatrician was named Dr. Cutter and to make up for his name he wore a jolly bow tie, and had the little asthmatics try to blow out an electric bulb shaped like a candle. Because I needed a shot, first he brought out a foot-long fake syringe, and then when I started to turn away in abject terror, he said, “I think I have something better” and out came the real syringe and I was so relieved that I never even flinched as he darted me. I just looked at his bright beady eyes, his yellow teeth, and turned my head away from his breath, a mixture of Listerine and garlic. I knew those smells as mother gargled every morning and father loved his pesto and I loved the word pesto; it sounded so perky and friendly. I also liked Dr. Cutter’s white doctor coat that had his name embroidered on it, and had deep pockets where he kept candies for what he called “good brave little children.” I wouldn’t be able to pick which flavor I wanted, but it didn’t matter. It would be mine, and I could carefully unwrap the crinkly plastic and suck it all the way home, once we were finished with whatever else he had in mind for me.

“She’s really quite delicate” he said to my mother, who sighed and said, “Sometimes I think she does all this tight breathing just to spite me.” He had no answer for her, and shifted into how to use the inhaler. “You know”, she said, “the car sounded funny today. I called my husband who said he would look at it when he gets home.” “Oh” the doctor said, “well, let me show you how to use this little inhaler” “No need” mother said, “but I am in a bit of a rush so if there is nothing else I should be moving along.” And he and I looked at her as she tossed her glorious mane of hair, holding up a compact and touching up her lipstick.

 And he looked at me, as I sat on the exam table, and I stared at my shoes, swinging my skinny legs with the knobby knees. Dr. Cutter knew we were no match for mother. He with his squirming full waiting room, me with my wan, pale face imagining I was sucking air through a straw, breathing in antiseptics and Chanel #5.

And my mother, looking out the window with a distracted dreamy face stood in patience, imagining a time when I would grow up and leave her, still young and free.