The day was in August, and it was well into
the three digits sort of hot. I mean the
sweat poured off my forehead like a faucet watering the dirt collected around
my feet, into a pool of personal mud. I
took on the task of digging out a sink hole that was developing in my front
yard. Beneath the crumbling sod was a
growing hole about three feet deep and about seven feet wide; it was literally
swallowing up my lawn. So I thought I’d dig
up the sod and get a look at how big this growing dent in the grass would
get. Well it was a gaping cavern. I decided that all I needed to do was pour a
bunch of large hunks of granite into the hole to fill it in, then add some smaller
river stones, followed by some fresh earth. Then finally sod it over and presto…problem
fixed.
Well,
the hole had all these jagged honeycomb pockets I saw needed to be cleared off to
make room for the hefty granite rocks I had assembled to fill in the hold. The little caves consisted of this really
hard clay; hard enough to bend the cutting edge of my shovel; concrete
like. In Northern California, growing up,
we had similar substructure we called hardpan.
I had to try and dig that stuff out as a boy when we finally convinced
my parents a pool would be a great idea for us kids. It was back breaking work
and I knew the only way to deal with that kind of hard-packed soil was to use a
crowbar and a sledgehammer. So, I
resorted to getting a crow bar and sledge hammer and knocked those chunks off
and made a wider hold to receive my rocks.
I was just about finished when the combined
effect of heat exhaustion along with sweat in my eyes blurring my vision set up
the incident for me to not realize my right hand index finger was between the
crowbar and the descending head of the sludge hammer in time.
To
this day I am not certain if I actually heard the thump, or that the shock wave
of the impact rode along my skeleton to my ears, but one thing was clear; I was
stunned into disbelieving inactivity. I
saw blood rushing out from under my fingernail, so I knew I had done a serious number
on my finger; then the waves of pain came.
And the pain throbbed in unison with my pulse. It was then and there I uttered the phrase
that has been said to be common on battlefields throughout the ages from around
the world by the wounded and dying.
“mommy”
I’ve
been hurt plenty of times growing up: Falling out of trees, crashing my bike, open
field tackles in high school football, you name it. But this was the most personal I had ever
been with pain. It didn’t just know my name;
it had my social security number. I
stumbled to the kitchen and ran my finger under the facet watching my damaged
digit in disbelief. It had so many
shades of blue-black that I was uncertain what to do. The echo of Mommy was reverberating in my
skull. I realized it was the primal
response to the shock and awe of the pure unknown. The good news is that my finger was not that
bad, I didn’t go to the doctor (this was before I had a wife who would demand I
do that or there would be hell to pay).
I learned something crucial through that experience…That if I don’t
leave this world in a fiery explosion without notice, then I’ll most likely
utter in with my last breath;
Mommy.
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