Helicopter
- Dec 8, 2021
- 2 min read
by Andrea Lynn Koohi
My daughter learned the word helicopter on a sunny afternoon after a man fell in the ocean. He’d been leaning off a pier, perhaps showing off to friends, when he lost his grip and fell. Of course we didn’t know this at the time we saw the helicopter, red like a sudden cut on a flawless skin of sky. It circled the vicinity of our Airbnb, each loop an opportunity to repeat the word, for Molly to run, nearly tripping, to the window, to giggle and scream and point to the sky, eventually saying hacopa, Mama, hacopa! I dropped to my knees to snap a photo, angled upward to capture the illusion of the helicopter balancing on her tiny finger.
Later when I saw the man’s photo on the news, I thought serves him right, what a dumb thing to do, as I sorted the day’s photos into a digital scrapbook and included the caption, Molly learned a new word today! and omitted the part about the man and the pier because we pluck out particulars that taint our joy, and it really was such a wonderful vacation.
I can’t say I know why I’m remembering this now, as I sit by the window with my tea getting cold. Maybe because an ambulance just passed by, and somewhere a toddler might be shouting ambance, Mama, ambance! and her mother is saying, yes,ambulance! as she joins her daughter in that fleeting sweet space between learning and knowing, between gaining and losing, and I wish I could get back there, but I’m just here, four floors above a street where no one looks up. I hope when I leave a siren will wail and somewhere a child will smile.
Andrea Lynn Koohi is a writer from Toronto, Canada. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in filling Station, Pithead Chapel, Sunlight Press, Cypress Press, Cleaver Magazine, Lost Balloon and others.
