My Granddaughter's Flight On Her Swing: A Short Story

This is a short story about my Granddaughter, Cassie. She was a real tom boy growing up; very clumsy, always falling over her feet. She grew up to be a lovely, graceful woman.

CASSIE'S FLIGHT

During the summer months when school is out, my Granddaughter Cassie would come and visit me every Friday. We would spend the entire day together just doing the things she enjoyed. When she was six years old, I would look at her and think how fast she is changing. It was hard to remember what she looked like last month. I can tell she is going to grow tall like her Father.

Cassie was always a very feminine little girl. She loved to pick flowers in my garden. She would make an arrangement to take home to her Mother, and another one for my dining table. She loved to wear dresses with pretty flowers. It was always hard to get her to wear shorts or pants. She liked her hair pulled up in a ponytail with a pretty bow at the top. She was a beautiful little girl. Her hair was light brown and very curly with ringlets everywhere. Her eyes were green.

In describing Cassie at age six, you could say that although she was a sweet, adorable, loving, and beautiful, she was never graceful. Her body never wanted to coordinate with her feet. Cassie’s mind was always on where she wanted to go, and she would fail to look for obstacles in her path. She took a lot of tumbles in her daily life, and always had bruised knees.

Early on a beautiful, sunny, Friday in July, I went to her house to pick her up to bring her back to my house. After her favorite breakfast of sausage and pancakes, she let me pick out a dress for her to wear that day. She brushed her teeth, dressed, and I put her hair up in the pony tail. We stopped by my friend, Laura’s house. Laura was old and sickly now, and needed help to get her chores done. She had a little wheeled cart that we used to take her trash to the curb. Cassie helped me load the cart with old newspapers and garbage. She just had to push the cart. As usual, she didn’t look very well where she was going, and she was going much too fast. All of a sudden, Cassie, the cart, and all the trash took a tumble. She had pushed the cart off the walkway and onto the grass. Fortunately for her knees, the grass was a good cushion! I helped her up; we reloaded that cart and finished the job.

On the way to my house, we got into one of our deep discussions.

“There’s one thing in this world I really would like to do, Grandma,” she said seriously. “I want to fly like a bird”.

“Every child wants to fly, Cassie, when I was a little girl, I wanted to fly, too.” “My Mother used to tell me that if God had wanted us to fly, He would have given us wings. So, because we don’t have wings, we must never even try to fly.”

I didn’t tell Cassie, but I remembered the time I stood on the roof of our barn, and seriously thought about jumping off to see if I could fly. I was too afraid to try, and I went through my childhood wondering if I could have flown if I had really tried.

Every Friday, Cassie would ask, “Grandma, what are we going to do today?”

On this Friday, I told her we could go to the park and afterwards, get some ice cream. She was excited about that! After we had lunch of corn dogs and cookies, we went to the local park. It was a wonderful park that had been built by parents of the neighborhood. It was constructed of heavy wood, with towers, slides, and swings. The highest tower was about ten feet off the ground. For a child looking down, it probably looked like a three-story building. There were lots of places to walk over and under and through.

When we got to the park, she was so excited to explore the tunnels, and we both did that for a while. She wanted me to go down the slide, but at my age, I refused. She went down the slide about 10 times. Then she just had to try the swings. There is something magnetic about swings and kids. They are just drawn to them. The area on the ground under the swings had been covered with a material that was softer than dirt or sand, but was still pretty hard. Cassie knew how to “pump” herself, but I had to give her a few hard pushes to get her started.

The builders of this playground had a great imagination. There was one swing that had a pink molded plastic seat that looked like it had been made from a chair in a doctor’s reception room. One swing looked like a metal tractor seat. After Cassie tried these two swings, she wanted to try the swing that had been a big tire like the ones four wheelers have. It hung from big, heavy chains and it looked quite safe. After she got onto the swing, I gave her a big push, and sat down to watch her. She begged for another push, so I got up and pushed her again, higher this time. Then, she began to pump herself. She was going higher and higher.

“Cassie, hold on tight, you’re going pretty high!”

She just laughed, and said, “O.K., Grandma.” She was having such great fun!

I looked over just for a second at some children playing nearby. When I looked back at Cassie, she literally flew out of that swing, just like a bird flying from a tree. Her arms and legs were straight out. I’ll never know the distance she flew before landing, but it had to have been eight or ten feet. She landed on her poor little knees and both hands. When I picked her up, she seemed to be in shock and disbelief. She wasn’t even crying.

“I did it, Grandma. I did it! I really did fly!”

I held her tight, and wiped away the dirt from her hands and knees, and said, “Yes, Cassie, you really did fly!"

Cassie has grown up to to a beautiful young lady. She is no longer a clumsy tom-boy. She is graceful now. She still likes to dress up in a beautiful dress, and Be A Girl.