Sunday Scribblings: I Knew Instantly

This week's prompt for Sunday Scribblings was imagined because many Scribblers leave comments with the ladies running SS which start with "I knew instantly what I was going to write about."

That happens to me sometimes. It didn't happen to me with this prompt. In fact, the phrase only brought to mind my encounter earlier this week with a CHP officer. "I knew instantly that hitting the brakes at the moment I saw the motorcycle cop was not going to prevent me from getting a ticket." That doesn't make for a very interesting post, does it?

The second thought was this one: "I knew instantly what Youngest was talking about when he said the other boy didn't come to the Cub Scout meeting because he had those things which jump on his hair." I'm not sure that writing about the lice pandemic at the kids' school makes for a compelling post either. So I'll go back in time for this one.

I knew instantly when my secretary tracked me down in the middle of a presentation to the Los Angeles DWP that my father had died. At 3:30 in the morning, I had been awakened by hysterical crying. It was my own. I've no memory of any dream, but then I rarely remember dreams. All I know is I woke up inconsolable in a strange hotel room. It was painful and nearly unstoppable.

But stop it did, the crying and terrible pain in my soul or core or what-have-you, and I shoved it all deep down as I showered and dressed and drove to the meeting. I convinced myself over those few hours that it hadn't been so bad, that I was feeling fine, really.

When my client was called out of the meeting and then immediately returned, headed toward me, I knew, then, what it was. Not soon after, it was confirmed for me: my father had slipped into a coma in Cocoa Beach, Florida, as I was waking up hysterical in Los Angeles, California. At the instant he left, I apparently knew.