Blue Pillow

Last night, it was the blue pillow lying in the hallway, its corner crisply pointed upward, its center crushed, a stray curly hair, that I couldn't get out of my mind. Would you please pick that pillow up? I asked more than once, as both boys stepped over it on their endless treks up and down the hall. The blue pillow was there because as Henry walked into the kitchen with Sophie for dinner and turned left into the kitchen, she went down in the doorway, the split second before I glanced their way and knew it, like some sort of homing dog, I knew she'd go down, so I turned toward them, grabbed her and as she jerked, both Henry and I lowered her to the floor. I bent my knees to keep her arms and legs from hitting the door frame and the narrow walls of the hallway, Oliver put his head in his hands at the table in the kitchen, Henry said, I'll get a pillow, and he brought it to me and we placed it under her head while it jerked and her eyes rolled and her near-herculean efforts to sit up, while jerking, still seizing, taking the rest of my efforts. I'm so sorry, I said in the direction of the kitchen, the edge of turquoise peripheral in my vision, I adore that color, but only in my head because Oliver was crying over his pasta. I'm so sorry. I felt sweat trickle down my back, my face felt inflamed, the blue of the pillow behind Sophie's hair an ocean. When the jerking stopped, I heaved myself -- and her -- up in my arms and carried her to her room where I lay her on the bed and sat there myself for a moment.