Walk as children of light;
pit-pattering barefoot on the grass in the blaring afternoon sun on a late July day. Genuinely enjoying the way the parched yellowing grass almost crunches under foot with each eager trotting stride. I stop under the motherly branches of the pecan tree to take a rest from the heat. This is the same tree who just two nights before in the loud rain storm added to the terror when the monsoon sent pecans shooting into my bedroom window, sure sounded like the rat-a-tat of gunfire to me. Now in the bright sunlight I see it for what it is a big strong tree. It can protect me, not hurt me. How silly of me, just because it was dark I became scared of this same tree that has been here since my brother brought it home in the back of dad’s old beat-up Food Ranger truck.
As I sit in the front yard under the big pecan tree, I can start to smell mom’s meatloaf cooking. That means it must be getting close to 6p, I venture by the intensity of aromas permanenting from the open window.
Just then the gnarly sound of the Wilson’s self-resorted 1952 Indian motorcycle rev-ing up to start startles me from imagining the first bite of that heavenly meatloaf. Oh, that was what woke me up last night. It was nothing to be afraid of, Mr. Wilson must have been up late toying with his bike.
I sit there under the shade of the big tree for a few minutes. Picking off the dirt clumped under my right foot’s pinky toenail, I laugh to myself about getting frightened by the tree and the motorcycle. Soon I hear mom gleefully call out from the kitchen window, “Dinner’s Ready! Come inside and wash up….and use soap!”
…The next day while playing touch football on the neighbor’s front lawn with my friend, her older brothers and some of the pre-teen gang from the block. Walking back to the line of scrimmage, professionally exhibited by the Hooser’s garden hose, DonEric gets distracted by his younger brother trying to squash a stink bug under the heel of his new pump-up Reebok sneaker. “Hey Stop that! You’re going to get your new Reeboks dirty, mom would be miffed, and what did that little bug do to you anyways?!” Donavan looks like he is thinking up a valid rebuttal but just sighs; “Alright” and instead bends down and pumps up the nifty button on the tongue of his sneakers a few times.
In the light of day that bug gets to scurry-off. I wonder what would have happened if my friend wondered across it after coming home from after-school band practice. It would be dark by then. …