Jack’s Mid-Missouri Memory: The Great Feeling of Being Carried

As I sat in my car waiting for my wife to come out of Wal-Mart this last Friday, I found myself watching mothers and fathers with little children as they carried them in and out of the store. With the warmth of the car, and being kind of drowsy, my mind started trying to recall the feeling of being carried. I think there is something unique in that action, a warmth and weightlessness you don’t experience past a certain age, and in my case weight. For full disclosure however I do have to admit being carried as a grown man at least once. It happened when I worked as a truck loader at Payless Cashways, and broke a ligament in the back of my knee. I was crumpled up on the floor of a truck I had been loading after I felt a sharp pain behind my knee, and felt something like the snap of a rubber band, that had just broken. The leg gave away and I found I could not raise myself off the floor. A fellow loader, and friend  David Ball a large man with muscles where I have, “Well” flab rushed in and picked me up like I was a two-year-old child, and put me on a machine so they could take me for help. That time included a lot of pain however, so I don’t think it would be the same as being cradled in your mother’s arms. As I watched the mothers and fathers carrying their children, some smiling, some not, and one who squirmed until the mother sat him down, then promptly raised his arms to be picked up again having apparently thought about the better view from up there. It has been a lot of years since I was held by my mother or grandmother but I still remember their soft arms, and the warmth I felt when they would hold me. I even remember being swept up, and swung around by my father and uncles, and the giddy feeling, that brought a tickle to my stomach. As I said I do not expect to ever feel that again myself, but I can enjoy that feeling vicariously as I hold my Grandchildren now.

If you are still  holding and swinging your children, enjoy the feeling, I assure you the children are.