Incident In Childhood Essay Examples

The warm day was emerging from the marine sky, and the sun revealed itself from behind a celestially white cloud, floating to my right. As I was walking, I was not looking where I was going, something my mother told me would eventually cost me greatly, but at the age of nine I paid little heed to what she was saying. I kept looking at the sky, all the while lifting as much dirt with my bare feet as possible. My mother told me to run to the baker’s and pick up a fresh loaf of bread. I made sure to run out of the house before she had the time to peek out of our green colored kitchen and into the little, shoe filled hall, to check whether I was wearing my flip flops. I just grabbed the cold coins from the dark, wooden dresser and rushed outside.
I liked going to the baker’s. His shop always smelled delicious and I felt that if I spent there more than a few minutes making my ordered purchases, I would be tempted to start devouring everything in sight, breads, rolls, cookies, cupcakes, everything. The mere thought of this deliciousness melting in my mouth made me salivate. Upon entering the bakery, a little gold covered bell above my head always rang. The door was a very weak one, mostly made of glass, with big, scrapped letters of the name and place, surrounded by different produce that the baker made, sternly resisting the passage of time. Half of all the letters was missing, but you could still read what it said. Once, he told me that his daughter drew everything on the door. It surprised me, because I had never seen anyone else but him working at the store. “Oh, she’s older now, with a family of her own, has so little time for me now,” he would tell me forlornly.
I would smile my childishly naïve smile, because I did not know what else to do. Later, I realized how much this meant to the old man, who always made me so happy when he gave me an additional cupcake, provided I eat it along my way, so my mother does not scorn either of us. He would wrap it up in a blue, silvery outlined napkin, so that I have something to wipe my hands with after I ate my gifted cupcake. He never asked me why my feet were bare, why I always walked looking at the sky instead of where I was going. Without any questions, he merely smiled at my childhood quirks and enjoyed them.
This particular hot summer day passed by with yet another morning cupcake, before breakfast, but I always managed to cover this up by eating more than I needed to for breakfast, not to make my mother suspicious. The rest of the day was spent in childhood frolicking in the street with other children, running across the little stream which passed by a friend’s house, and playing hide and seek in the park. However, on my returning home, I saw my mother not sad, but with a melancholy look on her face. She was not crying, but she did not have her usual sunny face on. I took her by the hand, her warm, gentle mother’s hand, and asked if anything was wrong. She put me on her knees, and started caressing my hair. “Honey, Mr. Jones died.” “Mr. Jones?” In my mind he was never Mr. Jones. He was my friend, the baker. “Mr. Jones, the baker. He had a heart attack this morning, they say right about the time you left.” “When I saw him, he was fine he even gave me a cup,” then I bit myself on the tongue, in hopes of not revealing our secret. “I know about the muffins, honey, it’s alright. And, that’s how these things go, one moment we’re fine, the other we can be gone.” She was still caressing me and it felt soothing. “We? Everybody?” I looked at her in need of an answer that she could not lie to me about. “Everyone, darling. We cannot choose this.” “What do we do, then?” “Well, we go about our regular business. We live, we love, we laugh. Simple as that. That’s what life is about,” she finished with a kiss on the forehead. Despite the fact that her words offered no salvation from the scary notion of death, they were nonetheless, soothing and reassuring. I buried my face in my mother’s embrace, and silently cried. She said nothing, she was just holding me, letting me inhale her wonderful smell of primroses, which she grew in her garden and had somehow, become intertwined with her skin fragrance. Her clothes were soaking up my tears. Her hands safely keeping me sheltered. After a little while, I lifted my gaze and asked her to come help me pick out something nice to wear for the funeral. She smiled back at me, and without letting go of my hand, walked me to my room.