Memories of the Walk Home

When leaving McKinley hall I realized I forgot my hat. By the time I got to my car the tips of my ears were prickly-cold in this last-ditch-winter-week of March. But it wasn't the cold I was focused on, it was a memory opened by the north wind.

As my ears began to tingle I remembered a walk home from school my sixth grade year at Horace Mann Middle School. I used to walk to and from school every day. It was about 4.5 miles round trip. My parents were both working and left for work almost two hours before my school day started. We only had one car. I was afraid of this walk. While at Cloud elementary my mother would drop off my little brother and I at my aunt's house and we would walk to Cloud with the cousins and neighborhood kids. There were nine of us.

When I had to leave behind Cloud and my brother to attend Horace Mann, there was only one other girl in my neighborhood that would make that lonely trek with me. Her name was Denice. I would leave my house, making sure the door was shut and locked behind me, carrying my tote bag with my sack lunch and books. Always books. I would walk one block to her house to pick her up. Sometimes, if her Dad did not have to be at work early, he would take us. I loved those days. After school, we walked home. Our only inclement weather resource we had was a possible ride from a neighbor whose daughter also attended, but this was an unreliable source as he drove a laundry truck and sometimes he wasn't in the area. The other was to wait for one of our parents to pick us up, which meant we would have to sit in the entry to the school for an hour and a half.

It was an early spring day, one where the Kansas weather changed drastically from a cool spring morning to a last-ditch-winter afternoon. There was no one to pick us up from school and so we began our walk clad only in light windbreakers, no gloves, no hat. I remember being barely able to see as the north wind (of course, we lived directly north of the school) battered our eyes, streaming tears into our windblown hair. My nose was so cold at one point that I began taking one hand from my pocket to cover my nose, breathing my warm breath into my cupped hand. This only lasted for a minute and I would switch hands, my cold hand jammed into my thinly lined pocket in an attempt to thaw my numb fingers.

By the time I left Denice at her door I could barely feel my legs, nor the tears that were streaming down my face, not just from the wind in my face but from the fact that I was cold. Very cold. I dropped my house key twice before I was able to unlock the front door and I headed straight for my bedroom, climbing under the covers fully clothed. When my brother arrived thirty minutes later he found me, still burrowed under blankets, still crying.

I fell asleep. When I awoke my mother was sitting on the bed, my brother at her side. She asked what happened, so I told her. Without another word she went to the kitchen and made me some hot chocolate. She sat on my bed while I held the mug in my hands.

But, it really wasn't the memory of the cold or the walk. What I thought about most while I sat in my car on campus was the look in my mother's eyes. And I recall now seeing it often as a child. Her eyes were many times apologetic and sad. She had to go to work after my Dad lost his job when Cudahy meat packing plant closed and he was left to work odd jobs for many years. Both working for low wages, they couldn't do the things they assumed they would be able to do as parents, buy us the things we needed or didn't need, take us to places kids love to go, or even pick us up from school.

As I left campus, I called my mom. Just to say hello, to tell her about class, about my walk on campus and that it reminded me of walking home from school. I even brought up the story, but she didn't remember. She did remember the many times I threw my house key in the trash along with my lunch sack, or when we did  receive rides from the neighbor with the purple laundry truck and how we used to sit on stacks of wrapped towels in the back. I'm glad she doesn't remember that particular walk home or has chosen to forget. It's enough that I remember and enough that I wish I could make it all up to her.