Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Illustrate the meaning of “A Stitch in Time Saves Nine” (without using the actual phrase or literal example). (01/03/08)
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TITLE: Old Scars | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marilyn Reicks
01/10/08 -
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One sunny clear fall day, my teacher gave us gunnysacks and we took off for the pastures and woods on a farm close to the school. We picked the sticky pods of milkweed and stuffed them into our tall burlap bags. Some of the pods had broken open and the brown seeds were popping out amongst the white feathery insides. It was fun talking and working quickly to fill our sacks. As soon as one bag was full, another one, in which to push the five-inch pods, was handed to us.
The students were delighted to get outdoors away from our studies and the confinement of the schoolroom. Toward the end of our search, we ran gleefully and recklessly down a long hill in a grassy pasture. Running very fast and swinging my partially full bag, I ran with breakneck speed into coiled barbed wire lying treacherously hidden in the tall grass. The barbs on the wire ripped through the flesh on the calf of my leg. I screamed with instant pain and the sight of blood running from the tears in the muscular tissue.
My teacher hurriedly rushed me to the nearest farmhouse, a large square, two-story structure. Clara, a kindly, loving older woman rushed me to her kitchen and sat me down on a hefty solid oak chair by the kitchen table. From her pantry just off the kitchen, she brought a bottle of disinfectant, which she poured over my wounds. Then she carefully washed away the blood and disinfected the area again. At first, I winced in pain when the disinfectant stung but at the same time, I felt relief that this capable, caring person was helping me. Finally, when the bleeding stopped, she skillfully poured disinfectant on the bandage and wrapped my leg with the large strips of white gauze.
My Mother had often spoken of Clara’s family with whom she had boarded when she was the teacher at Canoe #8 in the early 1920’s. Back then, my father bought my Mom’s lunch box at the school social, continued to court her, and married Mom in 1924. After Clara married, she continued to live on her parental home place, which was close to the farmstead where my parents lived. Mother and Clara remained friends over the years. Many times, as a child, I had played among the rows of carefully cared for decorative shrubs on Clara’s front lawn. Some of my fondest memories are of her tasty homemade fruit sauces, which she canned every year. So, I was comfortable with Clara’s nursing of my injuries.
Today, looking back over sixty years to that scary time of my injuries, I give thanks to the Almighty for people like Clara who heal the mental anguishes of a young frightened person while they repair serious physical damages to the body. After all these years, I still have the scars to prove that finding milk pods for the United States Government defense purposes by rural school students was not all fun and games back in the time of WWII. May God bless saintly Clara for her prompt action to sanitize the gapping bloody tissues and bring about healing without any infection. Clara’s experienced expertise helped my sores to heal without needle and thread to sew together the torn bloody flesh.
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