Girl in the Turned-Down Bed.
At a Presbyterian Church, on a sunny church Sunday morning, the kind that warms like the sweetest cinnamon, a tiny baby was baptized. Her white linen dress felt softly taunt to the touch as she was moved from father to pastor and back to mother. A member of something much bigger than herself, I calmly wondered why in the world such a thing was done at such a young age. There’s no way this tiny baby could understand the magnitude of that lukewarm water as it silently dripped down the back of her soft little neck. Hell, I didn’t even understand it. Suddenly, I realized we were all snapping our heads back up from the prayer and I didn’t question it anymore. That afternoon, the little girl was placed in her new pink satin crib and slept lazily in a turned-down bed as her family ate finger-foods down below her in the living room.
Some twenty-three years later, that same little girl put on a white dress and swished-swished down the aisle at a Presbyterian Church to her love. She told me later that she felt her feet in heeled-shoes glide as if she was being sweetly waltzed by something so beautiful, something so filling. At the reception that night, I was the one who gently shut the car door closed and stood in the road, watching them drive off until all I saw was a tiny black speck against the orange glow of the street lamps. And then they were gone. Someone tapped me back to reality and jokingly said, “Hey, it’s not your job to worry about her anymore. Come have a drink.” I thought later that night how magical of a moment it will be when the morning sun finds the two together, now married as a mister and a misses. I thought about how proud the mister will be when he looks over and sees that girl in a turned-down bed.
Seven years, three days, and one week later, the conversations that lofted about the high arches and pews of an afternoon at a Presbyterian Church were full of remembrance. The walls of the sanctuary were now tinged with gloom as the line of people stretched out into the foyer and the soft scent of floral arrangements breathed about the room They were all there to see a girl in a turned-down bed. She laid there, soft hands resting on a white sundress, with pink satin all around her. The only thing people could seem to muster was that at least, at least, at least, she left behind a precious baby daughter of her own that looked exactly like her mother. The only thing I could seem to muster was to cry.
“How incredible are the lives we humans lead,” I thought it to myself as I placed my granddaughter to sleep in her little pink crib and thought about my own daughter somewhere sleeping beneath the grass in a turned-down bed.
So that's what I wrote and that's what ultimately lost. It's okay, though. I still really like NPR, no grudges will be held.
Thanks to C. Charles Bley for telling me about this really neat contest and thanks to anyone who took the time to read.
Yours,
katie beth
