Su Hao a/k/a Kohlrabi
I enjoy finding veggies with quasi-human characteristics. This little, grumpy-faced guy looked like he was winking at me! As usual, the childhood memories resurfaced.
When I was a young girl I’d lain flat on my back on the lawn to watch the clouds as they’d sailed over me. My finger had pointed to the sky as I’d excitedly called out, “Look! That cloud flying by is shaped like a puppy and that other one looks like a man with a grouchy face!”
A nun had been standing over me, robed in her black and white habit with scapular, cowl, veil and gigantic rosary beads about her waist. She had scolded me saying, “It is evil to create images. What you are looking at is nothing more than clouds.”
I’d pondered how seeing shapes in clouds could be evil. As I’d done so, the nun had voiced a further lesson to me. “The clouds are not flying, instead the earth is spinning around as it rolls around in the sky The people in the north look up, those in the south are looking down at the sky. Those people otherwise all around the earth are looking sideways when they think they are looking up.”
I had been too frightened to ask if I’d been looking up, down or sideways! I had slowly dug my little fingers into the soil, fearing I could slip off the earth. I’d then wondered if the clouds, like the pillow on my bed, would cushion me if I fell?
Slowly I’d released the earth from my fingers and I had gotten to my feet. When they stayed planted on the ground, I had surmised that we were in the north and felt relief. A second emotion washed over me as I’d felt pangs of fear for all the people who would be sideways or down.
Two horrible questions had formed in my mind 1. Would the sideways people all slide down to the bottom of the earth? 2. Would they fall down into the sky to join the bottom people that surely must have fallen already? I would later be taught about gravity, but in my child mind that day the concept did not exist.
Also that day I had wondered, why the large wooden crucifix hanging from her rosary beads bore a 3d metal image meant to represent the crucified Jesus. Looking more closely I’d observed a smaller image of a skull and crossbones attached to the crucifix!
I would later learn the skull and crossbones refers to the hill on which Jesus had been crucified. The hill was called “Golgotha” – the place of the skull. I found a cross made of skulls – I will add a photo of it at a later date as I am away from home. I’d found the cross a curiosity until I’d learned more about Golgotha.
My memories, once I am able to retrieve them to carefully dissect and analyze them, continue to explain to me why I’d been a confused and overly sensitized child.
© Zora Zebic, 2017
You must have been very relieved to learn about gravity!