BANG! I was startled. The door had slammed shut in front of me. I would always remember that door, the weathered boards in a horizontal pattern with protruding twisted rusty nails. There was a well worn latch on the door and oversized triangular shaped hinges. It was large and heavy, a barn door.
I was following my father and brother out of the barn as they headed to the stable to take care of the horses. Now I was suddenly separated from them. I reached up and pushed the door latch down to open the door. Yes, I could rattle the latch but no matter how hard I tried, I could not manage to open the door. I stopped screaming. Someone would soon come for me. My dad would notice that I was no longer with them and he would come back for me.
I waited and waited but no one came for me. I felt a rising sense of fear and panic. It was not because I was in the barn. I was familiar with the barn, the smell of fresh hay and warm milk, the gentle clanging as cows moved in their stalls, the bleating of the calves in their pen, and the heat and humidity even on the coldest of winter days. I enjoyed being in the barn but the fear was there and growing.
Why was I so anxious, so fearful in such a comfortable familiar place? Would anyone come for me? That was the question that haunted me. I could not know that an earlier experience was fuelling this sense of panic. (Two years earlier when I was three years old, my brother and I were sent to stay with our aunt and uncle while our mother recuperated from an operation. We did not see our mother for over a month and our dad came once to visit. It was deemed too upsetting for the children to see him and then have him leave without them. I could not understand what was happening. What had I done wrong? Why was I sent away, abandoned? I knew that I had to be very, very good for it not to happen again. I thought if I cry I will be sent away, I will not survive, I will die. When our dad returned to take us home, he carried my brother and I had trailed along behind them. To me, it was clear that our father came for my brother. I vowed to be good. If I was good, I would never be abandoned again.)
Now in the barn, my reaction was visceral. Fear turned to panic and then a growing sense of terror seized me.
Where could I find comfort? I turned to the gentle souls that surrounded me. I stared into the large soft brown eyes of one of the contented cows that faced me. I named her Geraldine. I explained the problem to Geraldine. Geraldine stared back at me with such understanding and caring that some of the fear, the panic, the terror dissipated.
I could think. How could I solve my problem? How could I get back to my family? It was clear that no one was coming to rescue me.
I looked at my surroundings. There was the one door that I could not open and another door that would be even harder to open. a door would not be an option but there was a window that opened onto the farm yard. It was not a window that I could open but I could break the window. The window was too high for me to reach. I looked around. A metal pail used to carry grain to the cows, I could stand on that. Another metal pail, I could use that to break a pane of glass in the window and then crawl out or at least call for help.
I gathered up the two pails and moved them close to the window. I turned one pail upside-down and holding the other pail, climbed onto the first pail. Yes, it was just the right height. With all the force that I could muster, I slammed the base of the second metal pail against a pane of glass. The sound of shattering glass indicated that I had been successful. I moved the pail down from the window to examine the result of my effort. The window pane had indeed shattered but there were shards of glass still attached to the frame. It would be too dangerous to consider any attempt at crawling out through the window.
At that moment my uncle and cousins arrived in the yard. I frantically called out to them. My uncle gave a curious look in my direction. He laughed, my cousins laughed and he teased me about breaking the window, more laughter from my cousins. I felt shame and humiliation but I did not cry. I held back my tears. I did not say how frightened I had been. I did not tell anyone that I had felt abandoned and that nobody cared about me. I did not ask my father why he did not come back for me. I kept all of these hurts hidden as I nursed my shame.
At dinner that evening, my grandfather demanded to know why I had broken the window. I did not cry and I did not say how frightened I had been and how I had felt abandoned.
I answered “To give your old cows some fresh air.”