The Big Loss

I must have been 5 or 6 years old. I was down with the measles, which meant the portable radio was placed on my nightstand. The radio was big and brown with just a few knobs. A warm light snuck out the tiny ventilation holes cut into the hard-pressed cardboard back. The warmth and hum of the glowing tubes was nearly reason enough to leave it on. Confined to bed, the Shadow and Mr. Benny would have to visit me here.

Dinner was always special when the measles or chicken pox fell upon our home. Mom would serve tomato soup and saltine crackers and I could eat them in bed! Vernors’ ginger ale was her favorite drink. When I would see that golden fizzling bubbly elixir, her love for me was reconfirmed. After all the simplicity of soup, the divinity of ginger ale, sherbet would conclude the feast, cleaning the palate.

In retrospect, I think my mother may have celebrated the proportionate reduction in child-initiated mayhem (which we were quite expert at rendering) in exchange for a few extra trips up the stairs.

Being confined to bed was a double edged sword. On the one hand, my playground was reduced to the bedroom. This had to be weighed against the special treats I’ve just enumerated.

Those days were special. Mother would nearly hover over her stricken son and provide the sweet solace that comes only from mothers. If physicians had these powers, they could shutter their medical and surgical suites and sheath their scalpels. Simple glances would raise the sick, firm up the infirm and ambulate the involuntary bedridden.

All of this love, then so exponentially expressed, caused me to fall into a beautiful dream state brimming with lucidity. I was dreamily sitting cross-legged in bed with the toy cars in a semi-circle facing me. All of the primary colors were duly represented in the Fords, DeSotos, Chevrolets, and Studebakers. Their doors, trunks and hoods opened. Tiny steering wheels cause the wheels to turn properly. These were the best toys one could have!

Somehow I realized that I was being awakened. I knew that if I didn’t hold on to the shiniest red car, I would have to leave it behind. The thought was unbearable. These were, after all, my toys!

As I awakened, I saw the shiniest red car, its chrome glistening in the morning sun poking its rays into my eyes. I tried with all of might to keep that car in my hand but the cruel sun, the unrelenting ruler of the day said, “No! This night gift has to go!” 

I would have cried but I was already a big boy and I knew you couldn’t really stow away things from your dreams. I went back there the next night but everything in the dream was different. I awoke that morning knowing that the car was lost somewhere in a world I could not always visit and had no maps leading back to where I was once so happy.