"Let Her Cry, for She's a Lady"

“Ain’t nobody rock it like this,

 Ain’t nobody out there swift like this…

 …And any minute I’ll be rollin’ through,

 So get ready, get ready…” – Fergie

             (Okay, that song doesn’t really go with this entry, but I’m just totally digging listening to it as I type.  Let me have some fun, okay?  The lyric that actually goes with this scribble is, "Let her cry, for she's a lady...Let her dream, for she's a child..." - the song is "Wildflower", by Skylark)

             Helen was sweeping.

             That’s what Helen did, when she wasn’t occupied with something else.  Some people exercise compulsively, some people watch television, people do all sorts of different things…Helen swept with her broom.  Swept floors, or a deck, or the space outside the front door, even though all trace of dirt and dust had long since been swept away.  She swept, in a neverending attempt to eradicate dirt that only she could see.  She must have effusively thanked me ten thousand times for buying her that damned broom.

             And I let her sweep.  I didn’t bother her about it, didn’t idiotically point out that whatever surface she was bustling away at was already perfectly clean, didn’t suggest for no good reason that she do something else.  And that was likely one of the most intelligent things I ever did in regard to Helen, and one of the main reasons that she felt so comfortable in my home.

             But on that particular day, at that particular point in the space-time continuum, I did interrupt her sweeping.  God only knows how many hours she’d been at by then.  All I can tell you is that it was fairly late in the evening, and I could clearly recall having seen Helen sweeping, off and on, throughout the day, since when I'd first stumbled into the kitchen for coffee that morning.

             I simply said to her, as I passed through the kitchen for some ice, “Come in the living room a minute.”

             She obediently and without hesitation set her broom aside, and followed me into the living room.  I sat down precisely in the corner of the large, sectional sofa, and had her sit in my lap.  She leaned her head against my shoulder without speaking.  Helen always was a quiet one.

             Honestly, I didn’t have any particular plan of action in mind when I’d told her to come with me.  But I was reasonably confident of a bit of inspiration coming my way.  And, thank God, it did.  I stroked her hair with my hand for a bit, and then, after a minute or two, softly kissed the side of her forehead, and said simply, “Good girl.”

             Silent tears appeared, swelled, then slowly spilled out of her eyes, and trailed their way down her cheeks.  One of the things you need to learn in this life is that a girl crying isn’t always a terrible thing.  Sometimes it’s something you ought to just allow, and not try to “fix”.  After a moment or so, she casually stuck her thumb in her mouth.  That was another of Helen’s habits – sucking her thumb.  Helen had suffered much in her life, and had developed her own coping mechanisms.

             (I am, by nature or habit, a relentlessly sarcastic, needling bastard, but I take no small point of pride in the fact that I never once ridiculed Helen about her thumb-sucking habit.)

             We sat there like that for quite some time.  I had the good sense (for once) to not say anything else, but just to hold her there and let her cry inaudibly and suck her thumb.  I have often wished that you could heal a girl’s wounds simply by holding her in your arms – the world would be an infinitely easier place to live in if that were true.  Nonetheless, it is true that, sometimes, for a moment in time anyway, that really is more or less all it takes to take her pain away, to at least temporarily banish it. 

            Eventually Helen simply nodded off there in my lap (which kind of necessitated my sitting there awhile longer, which, okay, I wasn’t exactly crazy about, but, oh well).  Every now and then – grace of God - I get this stuff right.