Tag Archives: Fiction

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Sorrow and the Beautiful Love

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The clouds, heavy with sorrow, bent over the sky, deep and gray and so full of tears they could not cry.  It seemed the weight of their anguish would crush the earth, but the weeping would not come.

It had been such a beautiful thing.  That was the irony: only a beautiful thing could leave such an ugly wound.  Only a beautiful thing could hurt like this.

“It will get better,” they said, as if they knew.  They who did not even believe such beautiful things exist.

But she did not want it to get better.  She wanted the sorrow to roll over her and consume her.  She wanted to feel it breaking her.  It was all she had left, this side of love that felt like drowning, like flesh being torn from flesh.  She couldn’t let it go, even though it hurt to hang on, because it was the closest she could get to what she once had.

“Someday, this is going to hurt,” her brain had once tried to tell her what her heart would not hear.  “There is no easy way out of love.”

But by the time she realized it might be that kind of love, it was too late.  Looking back, she was astonished by how quickly it had happened, and how irrevocably she was changed, so that now, in the darkness of her sorrow, she was unable to remember how to see, how to feel, how to be like before.  It seemed she could only see in shadows.

Frenzied, her mind tried to find a way to put everything back the way it was.  It woke her, desperate to convince her that nothing had changed.  It told her they were wrong, that it hadn’t happened, that soon she would find out that it was all a big mistake, and she could run again to her love and hold on for all eternity.

But this was not the kind of thing that could be undone with wishful thinking or sheer power of will.  This was the kind of thing that could never be put right, not while one piece of her was in time, and the other in eternity.

The morning came, hushed and dimly lit, with little to distinguish it from the fading of the night.  Morning, noon, and evening were nothing but a collection of indistinct hours marked by indistinct rising and falling of darkness.  Always there would be darkness, darkness in the air and in the sky, darkness in the shadows that seemed to be a part of her now.

But this kind of love cannot be darkened by shadows.  This kind of love, this beautiful love, cannot be divided by death.

The tears came, and with them, the clouds began to lighten.  Almost imperceptibly, the light filtered through, pushing the shadows to the edges of the pools where her memories drifted.   The shadows sharpened as the light grew stronger, defining and outlining the very things she couldn’t make out before.

Suddenly, she realized she could see.  With breathless clarity she saw the radiance of that beautiful love, not taken from her, but given back to her in its fullness, cleared of all imperfections.  Indeed, it was more real than ever before.

She ran to it and clung to it, this kind of love, this rare, beautiful love, that had come through the darkness and emerged incorruptible.

*Dedicated to my grandma, who lost her beautiful love one year ago today.  “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face…” 

For more of this kind of love, read the remarkable story of one woman’s grief redeemed in John 20.

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A View of Eternity

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It was the kind of October day that lulls a person into complacency.  The warm Indian summer sun betrayed any sense that winter was coming.  It could be warm like this forever.

The sun on the changing leaves made lacy patterns on the cool dirt path, and brittle bittersweet crackled orange against the bright blue sky.  The sky was endless, like an ocean, cool like waters that go on forever, and as I walked, I stared up into the cloudless vastness and tried to see the bottom.  It was the kind of day that made me think I could see eternity if I just looked hard enough.

The coolness of the trees ended abruptly at the edge of the world where the horizon melted into the waters so you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.  On stormy days, the water was moody and brooding and grey like sadness.  But today, the waters of the Atlantic were stretched out shamelessly, asleep in the sun.

A sandy sidewalk and a narrow, New England road came between my path and the beach.  I stood there, debating whether or not to bother with crossing.  The kids were going to need dinner soon, and the dog would just chase the seagulls.  I looked down at Sampson, my boss’s shaggy black Newfoundland waiting by the side of the double stroller, and wondered if he was feeling obedient…or not.

But it was the kind of day that begs you to cross the street, the kind of day when simply living isn’t enough.  It was the kind of day that makes you want to soak up the minutes into your skin and breathe them into your lungs and hold them there forever.

I crossed the street.  The edge of the ocean was guarded by sleek condos and multimillion dollar homes which wore BMWs like jewelry on perfectly manicured driveways.  Their glossy windows reflected the day coldly, turning the beautiful shades of blue into something dark and limited, like the great expanse of the ocean had been scaled down and cropped into something that could fit into a realtor’s brochure.  Here, the ocean had a price tag.

Tourists drove by and craned their necks to look at the homes where the somebodies lived, and said things that began with “Who do you suppose…” and “What if…”

But I had not come to stare.  I walked up the street to where the iron gates ended.  There, in between the condos and the mansions, sat a grand old house, three stories high.  The wrap-around porch sunk in places and the grass poked through.  What was left of the white paint flaked off the hand-carved columns, revealing the weathered grey of old wood underneath.  The only thing new was the bright red front door, which looked as brazen and out-of-place as lipstick on a preacher’s wife.

In the front, the wildflowers and beach grass grew uninhibited, and the ocean was allowed into the house, pouring its soul into every room through the wavy glass of the single-paned windows.  You could stand on the sidewalk and look right through the house and into the sea.  Even the sand had blown up around it as if the beach had long ago reconciled itself to this intruder, and now it belonged.

But as much as the house belonged on the beach, it was shockingly out-of-place among the wealthy neighbors that had grown up around it.  I imagined more than one developer had offered a small fortune for that piece of property.  But somebody in the house couldn’t be bought.

On this day, when the ocean beckoned me across the street, I saw an elderly man shuffling out the bright red door and down the overgrown walkway on his way to get the mail.  A glass of iced tea sat by a gold and green striped recliner on the front porch, waiting.

The old man looked at me suspiciously and frowned at the dog.  Sampson had trotted right into his yard and was sniffing around.

“I love your house,” I said by way of apology and gave Sampson’s leash a yank, which the dog ignored.

“It’s not for sale,” he retorted.

“Oh, I don’t want to buy it!” I said.

He thought I was lying.

“I mean, I couldn’t afford to even if I wanted to.  Your house is worth millions, and I’m just a nanny.”

“Hogwash.  The house isn’t worth two cents,” he retorted.  “The view is worth millions.”

“You’re probably right,” I laughed, “but I love it all the same.”

He softened just a little.  Glancing at the babies in the stroller, he asked, “These your twins?”

“No.  They’re not twins.  This one’s my daughter, and this one’s my boss,” I explained.  “I think I’d go crazy if I had twins.”

“Hmpf.”  He got his mail from the box, the only mailbox on the street.  It looked like it would have fallen apart if not for the wire and duct tape holding it together.  “Take this to the porch for me,” he commanded and handed me the mail.

“Oh, okay…,”  I shifted the dog leash to the other hand and grabbed the mail obediently as he turned around and slowly shuffled back up the path to his front steps.  I was thankful he couldn’t see me try to juggle the mail, drag the dog, and push the stroller up the walkway behind him.  But it was worth it for the opportunity to get a closer look at the house.

With painful effort, the old man climbed his front steps and lowered his heavy body into the chair.

“Do you live here by yourself?” I asked, concerned about how he was managing.

“Yes ma’am.  I was born in this house, and I’ll die in this house, and I’m not selling it to anyone!”  He gave me a threatening look.

“I’m not trying to buy your house,” I reminded him, handing over his mail.  “I think you should be able to stay, if you want,” I said, but now I really was lying.  He looked about as sturdy as his mailbox only without the benefit of the duct tape.

“You should tell that to my daughter.  She comes around every week, clucking like a hen.  She put in a new door, saying I shouldn’t be living here with a door that doesn’t lock.”

“That sounds reasonable to me…”

“Too bad this forgetful old man lost the keys already” he smirked impishly.  “What do you think of that?”

“I think you’re a troublemaker,” I said with a laugh.

He grinned.  “Let me tell you something,” he said, leaning forward in his chair.  “I didn’t get this far in life without being a little bit of a troublemaker.”

The old man squinted up at me.  “How old do you think I am?”

I shifted my weight a little and hoped he’d just tell me.  He didn’t.  He looked ancient.  Was that close enough?

“I bet you’re eighty-three,” I said, but that was a lie too.  He looked at least ten years older than that.

“Ha!” he shouted, slapping the arm of his recliner.  “I’ll be ninety-eight in a month!”

I smiled.  “No wonder you’re ornery.”

His eyes held a smirk as he sipped his tea.  “You see those houses there?” he asked, pointing to the string of mansions that bordered his property.  “None of those were here when I was a kid.  That house was nothing but a field where we’d play stick ball after school.

“Sometimes, we’d play hooky so we could watch the ships come in to the harbor.  I used to wait for my father’s ship to come home, so I could be the first to tell my mother that he was back.  But one year, the ship went out, and it never came back.”

He stopped for a second and looked out over the water.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  I paused respectfully before asking, “You lived here your whole life, then?”

“When I wasn’t out at sea.  I spent most of my life on the water.”

“Even though your father died out there?”

“There’s worse things than dying out at sea,” he said.

I wasn’t so sure.

“Besides,” he explained, “the sea was all I knew.  It’s all any of us boys knew.  We were just a poor fishing town back then.  It’s not like it is now.”

“It’s not much of a fishing town anymore, I guess.”

“You ask any kid growing up what time the tide was coming in and they could tell you.  It’s not like that anymore.  They want to knock down my house and put up condos so the rich people can sit out in the sun and say, ‘Oh, what a view!’ and then turn around and complain about how much seagulls poop and dead fish stink.”

“Is that why you stay?” I asked.  “So they can’t build here?”

“Nah.  You want to know why I stay?” he asked in a way that made me think I didn’t.  “Let me show you.”

To my surprise, he stood up.  He turned the doorknob on his brand-new front door.  “See?  Don’t even need a key,” he chuckled.  “Come with me.  I’m not a serial killer.”

“It makes me feel better just hearing you say that,” I said wryly.

“I like you,” he laughed.  “Follow me.”

He pushed the front door wide open and stepped aside.  I gasped.

From his front entry, I could see the entire horizon.  The east side of his house was a jumble of windows, and all of them were full of the ocean.

“It’s the view,” he said.

“It’s amazing,” I breathed.

“Yes.”

“And beautiful.”

“No,” he said sternly.  “It’s terrible.”

I tried to hide my confusion.  “Well…” I began.

“I have spent my whole life on the ocean and I have come to know that it is terrible.  I lost my father to that ocean, and more friends than I can count.  You must know it is terrible first, and beautiful second.  Otherwise, you won’t respect its power and you won’t appreciate its beauty.  And that will kill you.  Or worse.”

“Worse?”

“Worse.  You’ll think the ocean is something you can have, and you’ll put up big, fancy houses and look out at it every day through your sunglasses and never really see it, never really know it.  At least if it kills you, you’ll know something about it before you go.”

I nodded, but I felt insecure.  “I’m afraid I don’t really know the ocean very well,” I confessed.

The old man took my hand in his and pressed it to his lips.  “My dear,” he said, “that’s the most truthful thing you could have said.”

He was quiet for a minute.  The dog whined at a crab and the kids kicked in the stroller.

“I’m just an old fisherman, and I’m afraid I must say the same thing: I don’t really know the ocean very well.”  He shrugged and then added simply, “Some things are too big to know in this life.”

“Then why do you stay?”

He looked out over the water with a longing in his eyes.  “What if you got to the end of your life and realized that all you ever tried to know could be known, just by looking, and you never even thought about anything that couldn’t be seen with your own eyes?  What if all you ever chased was something that could be caught?”

“I’d say that’s the way most people live.”

“Probably.  I guess that’s the troublemaker in me!  I don’t see much difference between living and dying, if you live like that.  I want to live—and die–pursuing something bigger than myself.  I’ve spent my entire life on that water, looking at it, feeling it, tasting it.  Every time I think I know it, I find there is more to know.  And that’s just the way I think it should be.  So I stay here, and I look out there and remind myself that there is something bigger than me, something that’ll take all of eternity to know.”

“It doesn’t sound like you need that reminder,” I said with a smile.

“We all need that reminder,” he countered.  “Otherwise, our eyes will blind us and we’ll forget to look beyond what we can see, and we’ll only get what can be gotten in this world.”

We listened to the gulls and the sound of the tide coming in.  He added softly, “It’s very close now.”

“What is?” I wondered.

“Eternity.  You look out there, and you can almost see it.”

I looked.

The sky had turned into a brilliant opal, reflecting red and orange and green across the cirrus clouds that had formed in the cool of the evening.  It no longer looked like an ocean, but more like a jewel.  He was right.  If I looked hard enough, I could see something of eternity on that warm October day when the ocean begged me to cross the street.

 

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Dining with Dragons

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A dragon who is at all polite

Finds table manners a delight.

He washes up before he eats,

And waits for others to take their seats.

It is evident he knows the rule

Of using a napkin to catch the drool.

He tucks it underneath his chin,

And waits for dinner to begin,

Though he can hardly wait a minute

To eat the stew with three boys in it!

Or bite into the Princess Tart

(Dragon wants a juicy part)!

He does not grab, push, or whine;

That’s not the way good dragons dine.

He waits his turn and takes a little

Of every kind of tasty nibble.

And even if it’s not his fave,

He doesn’t ever misbehave,

And throw his food against the wall

Or refuse to open up at all.

(Mom lets him pick the eyeballs out

So really, there is no need to pout).

If he happens to burp a flame,

And doesn’t apologize, to his shame,

Dad simply says, “What a light!

Save it for a fearsome knight.”

But Dragon’s manners are so refined,

His father rarely must remind.

He never lets his wings stick out

Or blows milk bubbles with his snout.

He chews each and every bite

Quietly, with fangs sealed tight,

So Mom can’t see the food inside,

Partly chewed and liquified.

When he has eaten every crumb,

Dragon doesn’t dash off and run,

But stays until the rest are through,

Gives Mom a kiss and says “Thank you!”

He takes his cup and clears his dishes

Just like any mother wishes.

He is the pride of every dragon cave

Because he eats like a gentleman, not like a knave.

Perhaps you think only Dragon is able,

But even you can eat nicely at the dinner table.

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The Dun-Gym

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CE Budd School

No one could hear the screams...

Chapter 3 in a series, beginning here.

If C.E. Budd School was a castle, the gym was the dungeon.  Sunk below ground level, it was cold and dark and filled with various torture devices like the heavy knotted ropes which hung from the ceiling, metal balance beams, and suspicious lengths of volleyball netting.   A kid could scream as loud as he could in that room, and no one on the outside would hear.

Three times a week, we were forced to endure unspeakable punishments in that gym, things like basketball and tumbling and various forms of running and stretching and jumping rope.  It was hideous, and the worst part was, the parents knew all about it and didn’t do a thing, using excuses like, “I had to do it when I was a kid,” as if that made it any better.

Even my teacher was in on it.  When it was time for gym, Mrs. Henry made us line up at the door in reverse alphabetical order.  She thought this was creative and educational, but all it did was make sure Jessica White was first and I was last and everybody else just memorized who they had to stand next to and never thought about it again.

Mrs. Henry held up her finger like we were still in kindergarten, and we all quieted down and copied her. You can’t talk if you have your finger in the air.  It’s like a law or something.

Once we were all lined up and quiet, Mrs. Henry led us snake-like through the halls lined with students’ papers and colorful bulletin boards.  We walked single-file down the steps into the belly of the school where the lights grew dim and the painted walls changed to colorless, glossy subway tiles that reflected our eyes back to us.

The lunch room was on one side of the dark hallway.   Here, the smells of Salisbury steak and overcooked peas mingled with the smell of Pine-sol from the janitor’s closet.  We were so quiet with our fingers up in the air, we could hear the lunch ladies chattering about the latest development on The Young and the Restless, which was a show about people kissing each other and then running around and kissing other people and getting all mad about it.

We filed past the band room where Miss Watkins was trying to teach five boys how to play brass instruments.  Their cheeks were puffed and red, and she had the look of woman who was trying to have more patience than she really had, like the way my mom looked when we were acting up in church and she couldn’t do anything about because God was watching.

The next door opened to the dun-gym.  On the other side, Mr. Peterson would be waiting, and next to him, Ms. Miller.  Mr. Peterson liked it when we called him Coach.  He wore his Loudonville Redbirds hat every day, even inside, which was against the law, but Coach didn’t seem to know about it.  He carried gum in his pocket, and sometimes, right in the middle of gym class, he’d shout “Free throw!” and everybody had to rush for a basketball and make one shot.  If you got your shot, Coach gave you a piece of cinnamon gum, but you had to spit it out in the locker room before you went back to class because Mrs. Henry didn’t understand about free throw gum and she’d make you sit in the hall if she caught you with it.

Ms. Miller didn’t understand about free throw gum either, even though she was the assistant gym teacher.  She was the only teacher I had ever known who wasn’t a Miss or a Missus.  I didn’t even know there was a third option, but I kind of thought Ms. Miller made it up for herself because she was getting too old to be a Miss but hadn’t quite made it to Missus yet.   Ms. Miller was some kind of angry in-between.

Coach called us kiddos and pinched our arms when we came in the door.  Ms. Miller blew her whistle and herded us into the locker rooms where it was her responsibility to make sure we girls changed into appropriate gym clothing and wore shoes that didn’t scuff and left our bangle bracelets in a locker.   Ms. Miller thought bangle bracelets were an affliction, and she felt it deeply.

That's a fierce Cardinal...um...Redbird

Our gym shirt was stamped with a picture of our school mascot, the Redbird, which isn’t even a real bird.  Blue birds are real birds.  Redbirds are not.  By fifth grade, you know that.  We had to run around the gym under a cartoonish painting of a giant red bird and act like we were proud of having a mascot that wasn’t smart enough to be called a Cardinal.

In the winter, when it was too snowy outside to do much of anything, that red bird watched us learn to square dance.  Ms. Miller told us to do-si-do and promenade, even though you could tell she didn’t think dancing was real gym.  It wasn’t even half-way agonizing like real gym should be, except that you had to hold hands with a boy, and Ms. Miller didn’t remember what it was like to be agonized over something like that.

But in the spring, when the weather turned warm and the dandelions started to bloom, Ms. Miller got all the real gym she wanted because that was the time of year when we all had to take the President’s Physical Fitness Test.  Nothing made Ms. Miller happier than a test on physical fitness.  It was the only time she smiled all year.

“It is our goal that each one of you passes,” she stated, “and earns one of these special badges.”  Ms. Miller held up a large, official-looking patch.  I wouldn’t care anything about it if it wasn’t for the fact that it was an official-looking patch, which is exactly the kind of thing a real spy needs to get into top-secret buildings and things like that.  It was a badge of honor for anyone who had survived the torture chamber of the dun-gym.

“Just do your best,” Coach added, “and you’ll do fine.”  He was picking at his fingernails and thinking about what he was going to grill for dinner.

Ms. Miller glared at him over her glasses.  “I have printed copies of the requirements and I expect each of you to practice at home so you can do your best,” she said, whipping her thin ponytail over her shoulder and passing around a stack of photocopies.   “You have two weeks to get ready!”

When I got off the school bus, I dug the crumpled sheet out of my backpack and handed it over to David, who scanned it quickly and declared himself my personal trainer.  We met in the fort for our first consultation.

“Sprints, easy.  Sit ups, piece of cake.  Flexed arm hang, are you kidding me?  All you have to do is hang there?  Girls have it so easy.”  He looked annoyed.

“What about the mile run?” I asked.  The thought of it made me queasy.

He looked at the chart.  “You have 11 minutes and 22 seconds to run a mile.  Stop whining.  You could walk it that fast.  Herbie could walk it that fast. ”

Herbert was the fattest kid in my class, even though Mrs. Henry said we should never call another person fat.  “Pudgie” made him sound like a puppy, and “rotund” made me think of the something I saw at the state capital when we were on a field trip.  So I just didn’t talk about it.

“You’re totally overreacting,” he concluded.  “You owe me fifteen Skittles.”

I counted them out, thinking about how I could have paid Michael half as many Skittles to get the same amount of help.   But you can’t very well ask your younger brother for advice about anything.   It’s a matter of principle.

Coach decided to spread the test over three days, which only prolonged the agony.  On the third day, we were scheduled to do the flexed arm hang and the mile run.  I had muddled my way through the sit ups and the flexibility test and even survived the sprints.  But it was hard to be happy about it when I knew a mile run was in my future.

I barely slept the night before the test, and when I did, I dreamed about being chased around the school by a giant bumble bee that looked like Ms. Miller.  I woke up with knots in my stomach.  I poured myself a big bowl of Lucky Charms and picked a few extra charms out of the box for good measure.  I wished I had lucky socks.

“You’ll do fine,” my mom said when I said I might throw up.   It was her standard mom-reply to every childhood crisis, no matter how large or small.

“Mom, I’m about to swim through shark-infested waters!”

“You’ll do fine.”

“Mom, I’m about to run with scissors!”

“You’ll do fine.”

“Mom, I’m about to fight a fire-breathing dragon and then perform open heart surgery on the hamster!”

“You’ll do fine.”

Once, just once, it would have been nice to hear her scream, “Oh my goodness!  You’re probably going to die or at least embarrass yourself so much that you can never go back to school ever again!”  But she never did.

The gym was colder than normal, and my skin looked purple and splotchy under the giant fluorescent lights which hung like eyeballs from the ceiling.  Coach took the boys to one side of the gym and sent the girls over to the other side where Ms. Miller was waiting.  She stood under a horizontal bar with a clipboard in her hand.

“Today, you’ll do one of the easiest parts of the President’s Physical Fitness test.   All you have to do is grab on to the bar and hang for at least eight seconds.  Jessica, why don’t you come up and demonstrate.”

Jessica always got called on to demonstrate things for Ms. Miller because Jessica was going to be in the Olympics.

Jessica smiled and hopped up on the chair under the bar.  Her skin didn’t look splotchy at all.  She was still tan from swimming in the ocean during spring break.  She grabbed onto the bar and as soon as Ms. Miller counted down “3, 2, 1, go!” Jessica dangled from the bar like she was part bat.  She looked over at Ms. Miller and smiled.  “How am I doing?”

“Great, Jessica!  Just great!  It’s 20 seconds so far!”

It looked so easy; I started feeling better.   Over a minute passed before Jessica dropped to the floor, still smiling.  “I could have gone longer, but I got bored,” she shrugged.

Ms. Miller patted Jessica on the back and made the rest of us line up.  One by one, the girls took a turn, and we clapped and said encouraging things like, “Good effort!” and “Way to hang!”

Soon it was my turn.  I stood up on the chair and Ms. Miller counted “3, 2, 1, go!”  She looked up.  I was standing next to her.  “Kristie, you’re supposed to be up on the chair so you’re ready to go when I say go.”

She had been so busy looking at her stopwatch that she hadn’t seen my attempt at the flexed arm hang, in which I lifted my feet off the chair and fell to the ground so quickly, I barely had time to contemplate  my complete and utter lack of upper body strength.

“Did you fall off?  Hop back up there and wait for me to say go,” Ms. Miller instructed.  She repeated her countdown, and I repeated my noteworthy performance, only this time, I knocked my chin against the bar on the way down.  The girls giggled, even Jessica, who was supposed to be my best friend.

Ms. Miller looked at her stop watch.  “Did you do it? “

“Yes.  I mean, no, not really,” I said feebly, rubbing my chin.

“Well, I can’t count that!  The watch didn’t even start!  Try it again.  I don’t think you’re doing it right.”   She placed my hands on the bar and pulled the chair out from under me without even bothering with the stop watch.  My arms gave out immediately and I landed on the gym floor with a thud.

“I don’t know what to do with you!”  Ms. Miller threw up her hands and ran off to consult with Coach.  He came over and took a look at my chin.

“Had a tough time with that one, huh kiddo?”

I nodded and tried not to cry.  “Well, just put her down for eight seconds, Miller.  I’m sure she could have done it if that bar hadn’t clocked her one.”

Ms. Miller gave an audible gasp.  “I will do no such thing!  I am not going to defraud the government!”

“Ms. Miller, it’s a gym test, not your state taxes.  Just write it down.”

Ms. Miller pushed her lips together and wrote down the number eight so hard, her pencil broke.   I thought that my muscles must be made of Silly Putty, and if that was the case, maybe I could just melt right into the wall while the rest of the girls took their turns.

But before I could, Coach’s whistle blew and he waved us outside.  The air was warm and smelled like spring and a cool breeze blew across the school yard.  It was a terrible day for a run.

“Alright, everyone, a mile is almost exactly three times around the school,” Ms. Miller was saying.  “You can walk if you absolutely have to, but you should run as much as you can or you won’t make your time.”

“Just pace yourself and do your best,” Coach added.  Ms. Miller glared at him again.  She looked like she was having the worst President’s Physical Fitness Test day ever.

Three times around the school didn’t seem that bad.  I remembered what David said and hoped for the best.  We lined up and Coach blew his whistle.

The boys tore off at break-neck speed while the girls trotted off at a more sensible pace.   I stayed with the pack at first and congratulated myself on the fact that my legs were not as wimpy as my arms.  We made it around the school one time before the faster girls began to pull ahead, with Jessica in the lead.  My lungs began to burn.

In the distance, I could hear Ms. Miller calling out the times of some of the fastest boys, who were already finishing.  My throat was sandpaper and I was pretty sure someone was stabbing me in the side, but when I looked back all I saw was Coach running next to Herbie, urging him on.  All the girls who had started with me began to pass me, one by one.  They were a lap ahead, and not one of them looked tired.

Somewhere during the second lap, I determined that the President’s Physical Fitness badge was not as cool as I had once thought.  It looked cool at first, but I had been blinded out of all sensibility by the savage looking eagle and gold trim.  No one was going to believe it was a real spy badge anyway.   I slowed down and started walking, holding my side.  I didn’t even want one, even if it came from the President himself.

I was right in the middle of this thought when I heard someone behind me.

“How’s it going, kiddo?” Coach asked, trotting along next to me.

“It’s okay,” I puffed, and tried to run next to him, matching his pace.

“Whose idea was this, anyway?” he asked.

“The President’s,” I moaned.

“What a stupid idea.  No wonder I didn’t vote for him.”  Even Mr. Peterson was breathing hard, but he kept talking.  “Back when I was in the Army, I had this Drill Sergeant who used to make us run until we threw up.  I seem to remember it taking longer than a mile.”

I did not want to talk about throwing up.  I was regretting every single Lucky Charm and was significantly concerned that I might be seeing them again very, very soon.

“You know, the thing about being a gym teacher is that you don’t actually get a lot of exercise during school hours,” Coach was saying.   “A mile seems a lot farther now than when I was your age!”

We spotted Ms. Miller up ahead.

“You got this in the bag, kiddo!”

“What?”

“Don’t tell me you were having so much fun running, you lost track of the laps!  You’re in the home stretch!  Just run it in.”

I crossed the finish line in disbelief.

“10:25, Kristie.  Good job,” Ms. Miller said as I collapsed into the grass.

10:25?  10:25?!  “You mean I passed?”

“Yep, with almost a minute to spare,” Ms. Miller smiled.  She was actually kind of pretty when she smiled.  I decided to try extra hard not to throw up on her grass.

Three months later, a package arrived in the mail from Washington D.C., addressed to me.  I tucked it under my shirt and walked into the house as nonchalantly as possible, just in case my Soviet-spy neighbor was watching.   It was my badge and a letter from the President congratulating me on my achievement.  I had survived.

“Wow, that’s awesome!”  Michael breathed.

“I thought it would be bigger,” David said, but he was twelve and wasn’t allowed to think anything was cool.  But then he added, “You’d better get Mom to sew that on quick.  I saw a black car in the neighbor’s driveway and I think we need to check it out.”  Everyone knew bad guys drove black cars.

I looked at my new spy badge and smiled.  The very sight of it would strike fear into the hearts of evil-doers everywhere.  I shoved it in my pocket and grabbed my binoculars.  Duty called.

Badge of Honor

Badge of Honor