Hindsight - One Sonogram Showed Two

 

I am reminded of, in this situation, the cow milking demonstration at the North Haven Fair, when I was around five years old. 

My parents brought my brother, then three, and me there one impossibly sweltering summer Sunday circa 1975. We were four of what seemed like hundreds of people gathered around a wooden platform. Aside from the stench of manure, there was no indication that anything pertaining to livestock was going on up there. It made no sense to me that I had to stand at the back of a crowd, looking at the rear ends of grownups, with only the smell of cow dung to refer to. I immediately tried to rally one of my parents to get a closer look. My brother, at the time, was too docile and probably too engrossed in an ice cream sandwich for me to even bother with. When I received little or no response from either of my parents who seemed perfectly content to be part of a herd half-witnessing one stellar cow, I decided to take matters into my own hands and marched up, through what was like a forrest of looming human dullness, to the edge of the platform. It felt like I was an eternity away from my familial base but they didn’t seem to mind my insurrection, so I stayed put after one or two anxious glances over my shoulder, half certain someone would be following me but only mildly surprised by the fact that I was alone. 

Pleased in the way that only a bossy older sister could be by such initiative and action, I  settled into my new spot by placing both of my hands on the platform, just above what was then shoulder height for me. I took one mere look towards the bloated filthy udders, able to enjoy my new position in life for a few seconds --at the very front, finally--  only to be immediately met with a christening of vile, brown goop, most of it landing on the back of my right hand. 

I can’t recall if I shreiked or just ran. But I was able to find my way back easily as the crowd knew better than to get in the way of a five year old with cow shit all over her hand. I remember, after my mother made a few perfunctory swipes at my hand with a crumpled piece of kleenex scented by the juicy fruit gum and menthol cigarettes of her purse, I was horrified by the residue of stench that was left behind. 

Even after our baths that night where I scrubbed the back of my hand raw, and into what seemed like after many baths for weeks to come, the smell of hubris and humiliation lingered -- a not so subtle reminder of what can happen when you try to force your way out from what just may be the natural order of things.