Swinging with the Blessing of the Sun

Sensitive topic warning - mentions unwanted pregnancy.

It was a summer’s day in 1962. Nora and Heather were sitting in the playground, like they did every day after school. They’d been going to the same one since they were little. It was the only thing to do in their town, to pass the time. The rubber seats were curved and uncomfortable, but they’d spent hundreds of hours on them; probably days - even months in total. The day was more beautiful than Heather’s thoughts. She somehow felt disrespected by the sun; like it should have been more mindful of her misery. The girls were swinging back and forth, back and forth, out of time with each other.

“What’s wrong?” Nora asked. “You don’t seem like yourself.”

“I have some news – not good news.”

“What do you mean?”

Nora slowed her swinging as Heather did, so they ended up, side by side again, their tiptoes on the concrete. They hadn’t safety-proofed anything in the playground in those days. Heather hadn’t thought to safety-proof either. She was young and she had felt invincible before everything. She was having all her moments of firsts: first cigarettes, first love, first disaster.

“I’m pregnant,” she said, looking at the sun dappled ground as if an answer might lie there.

She wondered if Nora would suddenly change towards her, the way her parents had when she’d told them. She’d never forget their eyes becoming closed to her – like two little blinds pulled down in unison, shutting her out forever. She couldn’t cope with the thought of Nora doing that too. She was her most precious friend.

“How?” Nora asked, incredulous.

Heather knew she just didn’t know what else to say.

“I don’t know – stupidity? Or maybe just bad luck?”

“Wait, does it have to be a bad thing?” Nora asked, tilting her head to the side like canary craning its neck to see something new and interesting outside its cage.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re happy with Rich, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but this wasn’t exactly in the plan was it?”

“So? You were almost finished school anyway. Do you really want to go to typist training?”

“I thought we were going to go together. That was the part I was excited about.”

“We can still see each other all the time.”

“It’s not the same though.”

“We would probably end up working in different offices eventually anyway.”

“It just feels like I have to kiss goodbye to my youth,” Heather said.

“Youth? You sound like my folks.”

“Well, I’m only sixteen.”

“So? My mum was sixteen when she had me. She was married then.”

“But I thought we were supposed to make educated choices now.”

“Sometimes you can’t plan everything.”

“Why do you seem happy about this?”

“I get to be an aunt… what’s not to love about that? I mean… I hope I do.”

“Obviously, yeah.”

“What will you and Rich do now? Will you get married?”

My parents said we have to. It’s not really our choice.”

“You don’t have to do everything they say.”

“Yeah, but where are we going to live if I disobey them?”

“You could save up and get a place of your own. Rich has that job.”

“At the garage? That’s just pocket money.”

“He has his own car.”

“Yeah, it’s beaten up, but it’s a car.”

Nora smiled fondly at me. “Stop making good things into awful things.”

“I wish my parents thought like you did.”

“They’ll come around.”

“When?”

“When they have a grandkid. It tends to make people turn soft.”

Nora thought of her own stern grandmother, but that had been in a different time. She was a formidable woman. Maybe that was why her dad was as severe as he was. She started to get a glimpse of the boy behind the man that she’d always feared, just because of that thought.

The sun continued with an unebbing strength. The girls’ legs glowed golden in the glorious light. Nora started to swing again, slowly, just a few inches back and forth. Lesley stayed still.

“I feel like my childhood is over,” she said.

“Want to go to mine and get an ice cream? I won’t tell my folks. You can still be a kid in my house. You can stay tonight if you want?”

“That sounds good,” Heather looked gratefully at her best friend. “I just need a minute.”

She could see Nora’s future stretched out before her, still filled with promise, spontaneity and excitement. She couldn’t picture her own at all anymore; just a faceless baby in her arms, an older version of Rich with a moustache like her dad’s and herself performing household tasks, day in, day out. She imagined the doors closing to her house, like those to a jail cell. She couldn’t picture anything more positive for herself.

She could feel her stomach swelling. That had been the first clue for her. She hadn’t even thought about her monthly and the fact it hadn’t made an appearance in a while. She thought back to the likely moment of conception and she wondered why it had seemed like a good idea at the time. She’d just fallen into Rich’s kiss, his smell had enveloped her and she hadn’t thought of anything beyond that. She’d thought they could do what other kids her age did and that they’d come out the other side of it, unscathed.

Nora was smiling at her. “Stop looking so worried,” she said. “I wish I didn’t have to do this typist’s course. It sounds like a drag.”

“I agree, but at least it opens up doors for you. I’ve closed all of mine.”

“You don’t know that yet.”

Nora started moving back and forth on her swing again. Soon, she thought, she’d be too big for it and then, before she knew it, she’d be pushing her own child on it. The thought of that brought a smile to her face. The sun shone on her skin, and she felt like its warmth was ripening something inside her: the idea that everything might be ok. Maybe, she thought, Nora was right. It wasn’t the end of the world. Maybe she was even lucky.