| As the saying goes, "They threw away
the mold after they made Kent." Reason being was that there just
wasn't another kid like him. His mother fled from California because he
had been kicked out of everyday care in the area where she lived. She
was at her wit's end.
"Auntie," she cried on the
telephone as she spoke. "I just don't know what to do."
"I can't work." "No one will watch Kent."
"Come on home." Starlene's aunt
advised from Oklahoma. "We will find a way." Little did she
know the shock it would throw upon the quiet hard-working family.
Kent had such endearing looks, and it was
hard to believe he was such a terror. He had inherited the
characteristics from not two but three strong races. There were his
Norwegian blood, Irish blood and not apparent but very much there,
Native American blood.
"I think he got the top layer of all
three genetic structures." His aunt was observing as the little
totally fair skinned, with hair of blond, and a five-year-old walked
into her house.
As it turned out the maximum
responsibility fell into the hands of their eighty-eight-year-old
Mother, Kent's great-grandmother, who was full Native American. She was
the only one who was a match for the precocious little boy. It was her
call late in the evening to make them look at each other shaking their
heads as they listened on the speaker phone.
"We are just back from ER." The
grandmother in her matter of fact way told them.
"What happened?"
"Kent had to have his head sewed
back together." The grandmother could have been given a medal for
her matter of fact way she related the story.
"I'm telling you." "You
just can't believe what this child does." "His poor mother is
out of her mind. I think she is in deep depression." "All she
does is hug him, love him, or stare off in space."
"What brought about the
accident?" The elderly woman's daughter wanted to know.
As the Native American grandmother told
her story in the customary way of the old folks, going in a circle while
telling every little detail, her daughter could see the happenings.
"Starlene came in from work as
usual." "She said they had a very busy day at the clinic and
she was anxious to get out of her nurse's uniform." "As she
changed, she was getting dinner on the stove and trying to get the
children in the bath tub." "We have that intercom thing on so
she can hear me or I can hear her from my apartment." "I could
hear her in there working around."
A break in the story telling must be made
so as to acknowledge the older woman's quick decision making as to
having rented a duplex in town where she could move her granddaughter
from California next door to her. Having made acquaintance over the
years with people who were property owners gave her the opportunity to
find an ideal location.
"There is always noisy slam banging
going on over there, but I don't let it bother me." "I know it
is Kent flopping around like a fish in water."
Her daughter had to smile with her
mother's comparison of the little boy in his masculine strength,
controlling his environment as easily as a fish "flops around in
water."
"All at once I heard this awful
slamming, banging sound." "Kent was screaming at the top of
his five-year-old lungs." "I knew something bad had
happened." "Starlene yelled," "Gramma!" Gramma!"
"Come quick." "Kent has fallen."
"I rushed out the front door and
over to her place." "I was so scarred." "I didn't
know what I would see when I got there." The gramma was matter of
fact.
"What happened?!" "What
happened?!"
The mother was in tears. "Kent
gashed his head!"
Sure enough there was blood flowing in
the extreme as it will only do from a laceration to the area around the
head and face. "There was blood running down his face as he
screamed."
"Quick!" "Into the
car!" "No time to call 911." They were off with the
eighty-eight-year-old woman holding the wheel steady as only she could
in her years of non ticketed driving. "Hold that towel tight on his
head." "Try to slow the bleeding." She advised her
granddaughter who was the nurse.
The hospital was really not much more
than a mile away with a clear straight thoroughfare, so it was no
challenge to get there. The elderly woman had been through many events
such as this as she had worked in the health field not directly with
patients, but as a liaison in health related fields as to public
relations and, of course, with her own family, immediate or extended.
"You know, the hardest part of the
whole thing for me, was having to explain to the doctor that Kent fell
off the top of a door, which he had been riding like a horse!" The disgust at the child's erratic behavior
was finally showing through to the woman who felt she now had seen
everything.
"Off the top of a door?" Her
daughter was seeing the five-year-old perched atop a door in her mind.
"Off the top of a door." The
older woman made no further comment.
None was needed. |
