Sibling Flying Lessons in the 1950s
From the dark concrete floor in the basement of our childhood home in suburban Detroit, my “so cute” little brother, not yet one year old, wailed.
Before that, I may have given his stroller a gentle push. Or maybe he just lurched sideways from his tenuous perch two steps below the kitchen. Five years before Sputnik, he was launched down the steep basement stairs.
Before that, Wayne chortled like my beloved Teddy Bear, sitting in his four-wheeled stroller, poised on the landing where our winter coats and snow pants hung from hooks mounted on the wall.
Before that, when Mother was busy cooking rice and okazu (a mixed vegetable and meat dish), I unlatched the crisscrossed wooden gate demarking my brother’s boundary and freed him.
Before that, I hypothesized, planes fly and land on wheels, so why not baby brother?
***
Five years old, I have just finished kindergarten. Although I could read and write, my shyness made Miss Brown initially fear that I was retarded. By contrast, Wayne was the outgoing child, and being a Japanese-American boy, he got extra privileges at home.
“Mother, I am going to Hoover School to play, all right?” I ask on a warm summer morning.
“I want to go, too,” Wayne whines like an incessant puppy.
“Susan, you can go as long as you take your brother.” Mother responds.
Begrudgingly, I agree. Walking down Glover Street, the sun beating down on my thick black hair makes me feel clammy, my arms and legs browning like a cut apple.
Seated in the swing, my legs launch me into private orbit for several minutes. Hearing cries, I am startled, unsure if they came from Wayne or my imagination. Dragging my feet to slow down creates a thick dust cloud that surrounds my brother at belly height. I jump off and offer to push him.
Wayne hops up, but once situated, his stubby legs dangle with his feet suspended above the ground. “Let’s go. I want to fly higher than you.”
Our sibling rivalry is suddenly unleashed. I resolve to push Wayne higher than he has ever been.
“Help me, Wayne. Pump your legs like I did.”
“Higher, higher!” he cries between squeals of joy.
I push and Wayne forcefully flexes his legs. The chains scrape the underside of the overhead support with the swing’s arc smiling broadly in the summer skies. Somehow I lose track of the swing’s path above me. In a “senior moment” that will recur regularly six decades later, I don’t duck my head. The loaded metal swing crashes into my forehead above the left eye. With a dull thud, the swing’s pendulum abruptly stalls.
Warm blood oozes down my nose. In an instinctive salute, my hand, already encrusted with sand from my fall, joins the gooey mess, hoping to conceal the first of many accidents. Every scar tells a story, and this would be the prototype.
Four cat-gut stitches bind the gash together, covered with tape and gauze that doesn’t quite reach my spectacular black-and-purple eye. Wayne flew higher than he had ever gone.
***
Before dinner, I put on my white figure skates to play hockey on our frozen backyard. Wayne has gear like Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings.
I deflect the puck away from him—it ricochets off the icy bank. Skidding backward, I crash into a snow berm—where thorns from our mother’s rosebushes penetrate me like porcupine quills.
I don’t recall ever scoring a goal. Scrapes and bruises, red, blue, and purple, stay with you longer than wins and losses. Even playing against each other, Wayne and I were a team. We soared in spite of bumpy landings.