Breathless

6/17/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Breathless

            “Get back in here and sit down, before you fall on your head!”

            “Don’t put your arm out the window that way. I heard of a guy who did that and lost an arm. This truck they were passing swerved too close and broke it off,”

            “Roll up your window. I just had my hair done.”

            People have always tried to separate me from my quest to partner with the wind. And all my life, I’ve practiced ignoring them. No one seemed to understand my compulsion to touch the tips of sweet clover, catch a handful of seed heads from dried sunflowers, and feel the change of temperature as the car descended from hilly terrain to meadow.

            The occasional bee sting or face full of gnats were minor matters, and so what if I should fall headfirst out the car window onto a country path that connected our ranch with the neighbor’s. Soft sand and a bed of clover didn’t seem like a bad landing place. In my mind it would be no different than being dumped off Brownie’s back when he shied at a soapweed, and not nearly scary as the time I took Nick up on a dare to jump out of the haymow.

            On the highway, there’s a certain exuberance in holding an arm out the window to feel the resistance of sixty mile an hour air, and that garbage about passing trucks; well they said your face might freeze in place if you kept wrinkling your nose and sticking out your tongue too. If Ray’s face hadn’t frozen solid years ago, after all the teacher’s warnings, I guessed there wasn’t much danger attached to anything adults dreamed up to spoil our fun.

            And why, on God’s green earth, would my mother prefer the sculpted curls she protected so particularly, to the caress of wind that plastered my locks against a cheek and brushed the bangs off my forehead?

            Over the years, I’ve sought shelter from wind, cussed it, craved it, and run out to meet it. Wind and I have a love/hate relationship, but when not a single leaf or blade of grass is stirring, on a hot June morning, I panic; begin to walk or run, in an attempt to catch a breeze, until the exertion leaves me almost breathless.

I’ve been on a hunt for air all my life. Like a fish on a creek bank, gasping for just one more breath; like a meadowlark on a fence wire, panting under the August sun, a newborn calf whose mouth and nostrils must be cleaned before the first breath is drawn.

            I’ve offered my breath to those calves, held the slobbery mouth shut while pressing my own against a pink nose still wet with fluids of birthing, waited for the little ribs to rise and fall on their own accord, and if they did not; if no returning breath was offered, bent again to the task, until a wobbly head lifted, shook itself to clear the mucous and looked about to examine the strange circumstance called life.

            Alternately, when my own air supply was almost exhausted, and no answering breath appeared, when rhythmical pressure on a rib cage, or hanging a limp carcass by the heels failed, I’ve dragged the body out behind the barn,  choked back convulsive sobs, listened to the mother’s mournful murmurs, and bent down, hands on knees to gulp great gobs of wind. There’s always a God’s plenty of that here in the hills; enough to heal a heart, dry the tears, and propel me onward into my own examinations of strange circumstances.