In the snow the children are making a dolls' hospital. Reminds me of a school I taught in once (for delicates, originally, treatment for T.B.). Bandstand type construction, open on all sides. On days like this winds of pure ice whistled through unchecked. The children came to breakfast. Asthmatics, mainly. Some seemed to be on their last breaths. You thought they would not last the day, but after breakfast they were fine. No thanks though, to the wind -- escape from home's emotional uncertainties, more like. Back to what the children do. Rows of lumpy animals -- some of species indeterminate -- and fragile plastic dolls, most with missing toes and fingers or wide cracks here and there. They lie in snow -- the lucky ones have bandstand structures made of straws to shelter them -- on thrown-together beds. A wooden nurse looks over them. Their parents huddle in a corner. They cry for them, have flowers and grapes for them -- real grapes, but paper flowers. A short way off, a dolls' house where the parents live. The flowers, I hear them say, are for them to remember those who've died.
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Wednesday, 13 February 2013
how do you define a lucky kid?
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10 comments:
I have heard somewhere that convalescent homes and hospitals used to expose patients with chest complaints to the cold air as part of their treatment.
Can't understand it myself.
Being an asthmatic, I find the cold air almost kills me. I don't think I'd have survived had I lived in those times.
The children appear to be much more perceptive than most grown-ups. I think they realise that they are the lucky ones - to be here now, and playing in the snow!
Many thanks for another thought-provoking post, Dave.
I so enjoy reading your work :)
Times have changed for these little ones although our air is more poluted.
had asthma when i was a kid...its brutal...love the contrasts in this...the parents in the paper house...the wooden nurses....i agree with ygraine that children are often more perceptive to what is really happening than most adults...
I remember these so called open-air schools from my childhood Dave - you paint a fine picture of one.
I remember these so-called open air schools from my childhood Dave. You paint a fine picture of one.
Thankfully things are different today....I can't imagine exposing asthmatics to all that wind!
That last stanza is definitely a tear-jerker!
What a bleakly beautiful poem.
It's a vivid picture of a poem I have really, very physically, breathed.
There must be some vivid memory in the connection of snow and hospital in your childhood. The purity of the snowy white is a little painful.
Ygraine
Perhaps I left it unclear. In the days when the "bandstands" were wide open they mainly accomodated pupils with T.B.. (Not that they did them much good either!) When I was there (for a six week teaching practice) they had fitted windows and were not so open. Even so they were dreadfully cold. The pupils by then were mainly asthmatics and children with emotional problems, largely caused by home situations.
Thank you for your very gratifying comments.
Tabor
Generally speaking, I suppose that must be right, buit I was brought up during the times of the London smogs, and that has got to be the most polluted environment I have ever known. And it must rank in the top few world wide.
Brian
Yes, you are right about asthma being brutal. And correct, too - I think - and children being more perceptive. (I somehow think the open air schools must have been brutal too in their day.)
Thanks as always for the encouragement of your comments.
The Weaver of Grass.
Thanks Weaver. I had no experience of them until I ended up in one. I had of course read about them, and seen photographs of them, as part of the History of Ed course at college.
Much appreciate this comment.
Mary
I caught a couple of phrases as the children were playing. I must say the idea caught me off guard. There was nothing else in the play to suggest such darkness. Thanks for this comment.
Kass
I really appreciate you saying so. Than you.
Tommaso
Thanks Tommaso. This comment means a lot.
haricot
There are connections, yes. When I was five I was hospitalised over Christmas. It snowed hard and I would watch my parents make their laborious way through the hospital grounds. Also, I remember
nurse bringing in great bowls of snow for us to make snow balls and throw at each other across the ward. (We wer all confined to bed.)
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