Living Consciously

This is going to wipe out any chance that any book of mine will ever be made into a television movie (or as it is more commonly described, “a major television movie event!”), but here goes. Television is too dangerous a medium to take for granted.

For one thing, it’s the hands-down champion of time-killers. Have you ever heard someone complain about the fact that they don’t have time to exercise, read, take piano lessons, or whatever else it may be? Try asking them what television shows they watch. I bet you a copy of TV Guide that they are regular viewers of several shows. Television has become such an ingrained part of our lives that the idea of leaving it off most of the time is a foreign concept.

Back in the days when television was still new, comedian Fred Allen said, “Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.” (It seems only fair to point out that Mr. Allen’s successful comedy career was almost entirely on radio.)

His clever comment, of course, isn’t entirely true. Television is a powerful medium. It can show us the intense reality of a dramatic news event, recreate history, move us, entertain us, and educate us. Not to mention its ability, this time of year, to bring us nausea-inducing repetitions of political ad after political ad.

One problem with television is that, once you begin watching a program, it sucks you in. This is the case whether it’s a high-quality drama, a vivid historical reenactment, a sitcom that makes an art form of inanity, or a documentary on the 87 kinds of spiders found in a tiny section of the Amazon rain forest. You start watching, you zombie out on the couch, and the next thing you know two hours have passed and you’ve forgotten all about your intentions to take an after-dinner walk and then call your sister.

This is why I shuddered earlier this year at the announcement of a new television channel targeted at babies. The six-month to three-year demographic apparently was underrepresented in the market. The channel is commercial-free, presumably in deference to the fact that these kids don’t yet have their own spending money.

Its creators are quick to defend their concept with words like "educational" and "appropriate content" and "interactive." Hogwash. The kind of "interaction" babies and toddlers need involves playing with real objects and real live people, discovering that they can chew on their toes, and tasting the dusty leftover Cheerios that they find under the couch.

When our local paper ran an article recently about this channel for tots, it quoted one mother as saying she had been skeptical until she saw how her one-year-old was "mesmerized" by the programs. Apparently, she thought putting the kid into an electronic trance was a good thing.

This is just what we need—an invasion of baby zombies. Move over, make room on the couch, and pass the pacifier. Hang onto the popcorn, though. After all, everybody knows it’s bad for babies.

Warning to the squeamish, specifically certain members of my family (you know who you are): The following story contains references to bodily fluids. If, while reading, you begin to feel dizzy or the room suddenly seems very warm, push your chair away from the computer, bend forward and put your head between your knees, and breathe.

I am not a fan of Halloween, especially since the kids all grew up and I no longer have the opportunity to cadge chocolate from their trick-or-treat bags. Still, it seems appropriate to acknowledge this gore-ridden holiday in some fashion. So let’s talk about blood.

My family has a tradition of responsible community involvement. We vote, we volunteer, we write letters to the editor, we help out our neighbors. One thing most of us don’t do is give blood. This is due to another long-standing family tradition—fainting.

It seems only fair to my father, a long-time blood donor, to point out that this tradition has come down to the female members of the family from our mother. My father learned about this family trait not long after their marriage. He was doing some leatherwork, gashed his hand, and quite naturally went to his bride for help. She took one look at the blood and passed out on the floor. He had to revive her and get her into bed, presumably being careful not to drip blood on the bedspread. Then he got to go bandage his own hand.

My sisters and I have inherited this tendency. There’s just something about the sight of blood that makes the room get warm and everything get fuzzy. We aren’t wimps. We aren’t uncaring. We aren’t nurses, either. It’s a good thing that none of us were accident-prone as children. It’s an even better thing that none of our children were. Maybe that’s an inherited tendency, too—an adaptation meant to help survive childhood in the absence of maternal wound-tending.

In spite of all this, years ago I decided to be a good citizen by donating blood. The first time, they managed to get half a pint, one slow drop at a time, before giving up on me. The second time, having made the mistake of going to the donation center right before lunch, I fainted. My husband told me later, "Wow—I never saw anyone actually turn green before." I was told gently but firmly that my services as a blood donor were no longer required.

This year, I decided it was time to try again, in a different town where the blood bank had no idea of my history. The first time, I was nervous, so my partner went with me to provide moral support and to be there to drive me home just in case. All went well. Which had its downside; now I felt obligated to donate again.

The second time, with misplaced confidence in my own fortitude, I went by myself. The donation process was fine. I felt fine. Everything was fine. Then they sent me off to sit in the waiting area for the required 15 minutes. I started feeling dizzy, got very warm, and woke up on the cold floor with several concerned faces floating above me. After a few minutes two staff members helped me across the room to a recliner. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is as a mature adult to have someone hold you up by the belt loop in the back of your jeans? I had to sit with my feet up until my blood pressure came back up to a reasonable level, and I had to call someone to come take me home.

Before I left, I was told that my services were no longer required. "It’s just not worth the trouble," the supervisor told me. Whether she meant not worth it for them or for me, I’m not sure. Though it probably isn’t the greatest advertising for the blood center to have passed-out donors lying around in the reception area.

Donating blood is a great thing to do. I highly recommend it—for other people. As for me, I think I’ll carry out my civic responsibilities by writing letters to the editor.

A group of us meet for breakfast nearly every Saturday after an early-morning meeting. There aren’t a lot of choices in that part of town when it comes to breakfast restaurants. We’ve chosen to meet at a place that is convenient, with food that’s okay and service that’s mediocre on a good day. We’ve been meeting there for a couple of years now. We’ve been complaining about it for almost as long.

The problem is the regular waitress. She’s disorganized and inefficient. After all this time, she has to be reminded that we want tea instead of coffee. Between the time she takes our orders and brings them to the table, she’s forgotten who ordered what—even though most of us order the same thing every week. Let’s face it, this woman is one cup of coffee short of a full pot.

Her concept of customer service is somewhat vague, as well. Such as the morning when, without asking, she brought green tea instead of black. A couple of us asked for our usual black tea. She brought new teabags—but then charged us each for two orders of tea. Last week she capped a morning of especially bad service by getting my order (the same order I place every week) completely wrong. Then she insisted it was my mistake. Instead of apologizing, she argued with me. She pulled out her pad. "But that’s what I wrote down. Number seven with sausage. It’s right here."

It didn’t seem to occur to her that having written it down didn’t automatically mean I had said it. I knew what I had ordered, and it wasn’t sausage. That word had not passed my lips. A different s-word nearly did, but fortunately I managed to stop it in time.

Why, you may be wondering by now, haven’t we complained to the management? That’s part of the problem. She is the management. She seems unhappy in her work, unwilling to be there, and unsuited for it—and she’s running the place.

Last week may have been the last straw. We started talking seriously about other places we could go for breakfast. Even high-fat fast food would be better than continuing to put up with this.

We talked about how this woman just didn’t seem to get it, about the glaring and recurring mistakes she made, about how angry she always seemed. Then someone said maybe she was dyslexic or something. Maybe she had learning disabilities, or problems with short-term memory. Maybe her home life was awful. Maybe this job was the only work she knew how to do, even though she wasn’t good at it.

By the time we got that far, I was beginning to feel sorry for the woman. This made her even more exasperating. I didn’t want to have any compassion for her situation. I didn’t want to think of her with sympathy or kindness. I wanted to hang onto my justifiable indignation. I wanted to march out of there in self-righteous search of a kinder, gentler restaurant with a waitress who could remember the difference between coffee and tea.

But once my anger became tainted by compassion, I couldn’t hang onto it any more, no matter how much I wanted to. It was so annoying to have my satisfying fit of righteous indignation wiped out by some empathy that sneaked in when I wasn’t looking.

Okay, then. Since my perfectly good snit was in ruins, the next step was to decide what to do. Ignore her poor service and her irritability? Keep showing up at this restaurant? Overlook her incompetence because I felt sorry for her? Would those be the way to put my reluctant compassion into action?

Not really. Continuing to put up with her bad service certainly wouldn’t foster any additional compassion on my part or any additional skill on hers. Nor is it really a kindness to help someone stay in a job she so clearly dislikes.

My solution? I can go ahead and feel compassionate, kind, and understanding—all the way to a different restaurant.

The glowing colors of a magnificent sunrise, a red fox tiptoeing through snow in the back yard, the face of a grandchild who has just discovered something new—another perfect "Kodak moment." And, of course, you don’t have the camera.

What’s the answer? You could try carrying a camera everywhere you go, hyper-alert for the next photo op, your finger poised to capture the moment for posterity.

Or not.

I remember a visit a few years ago to the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, a magnificent building filled with lush rococo gilding, carving, paintings, and statues. Its ceilings were painted with choir after choir of cherubs. It had more gold leaf than a fall New England landscape. To someone like me who thinks off-white is a color, its opulence was all more than a bit much. But even though it would be overwhelming to live in, it was marvelous to visit.

One man in our group went through the whole tour with his eyes glued to the viewfinder of a video camera. He couldn’t possibly have seen the full, wonderful extravagance of the rooms, because he limited his view of them to an inch-square screen. He was there on the spot, live and in person—and he missed it completely because he was so busy taking pictures.

I don’t mean to suggest there’s anything wrong with taking pictures. They can be works of art, images that stir emotions, and visual records of people we love. They can be a way to trigger and preserve memories. Still, you may not be creating any memories to recall if you focus all your attention on your camera and none on the experience you’re photographing.

Certainly, carry your camera. Take pictures when you have a chance or make an opportunity. Just don’t forget to look outside of the camera as well. When you fully experience where you are and what is happening around you, you’ll store images in your brain that are far more vivid than anything you can capture in a photograph.

In the Black Hills, we have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally. It’s fun to see the bikes, we welcome the 400,000-plus visitors (and the revenue they provide), and we enjoy the notoriety the rally brings to the area. We also tend to blink at some of the costumes or lack thereof, wince at the noise, and breathe a sigh of relief when the last Harleys rumble out of town.

Most of us also like to tell our own biker stories. Here is one of my favorites. It’s a true story that happened a few years ago to my friend Jan.

One day during the rally Jan had made a quick trip to one of the big discount stores to get some shampoo. She went into the store and was heading for the shampoo aisle when she spotted the biker. He was big, maybe six foot two or three, with long hair hanging in a greasy braid down his back and tattoos swirling up his arms. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just a leather vest that showed his chest—complete with more tattoos—and the hairy belly that hung over his belt buckle.

He was standing in the middle of a wide aisle, looking up and down with that confused air you have in a store when you can’t find something. When a clerk sees a customer with that look, the appropriate thing to do is go up to the person and ask, “May I help you?”

No one was doing that with this guy. Jan saw a couple of clerks in the vicinity, but they were both busily pretending they hadn’t seen the biker. Which wasn’t really surprising, because not only did he look confused—he looked angry. He looked as if he’d had a couple of small children for breakfast and needed at least one more for dessert. Other customers would come down the aisle with their carts, get a glimpse of him, and peel off down the nearest side aisle as if they’d just remembered something important they needed to get in housewares or lingerie.

As Jan came closer, the biker threw his head back and bellowed, “Won’t somebody help me!?” The two clerks vanished. The other customers walked a little faster in the opposite direction.

And Jan? Keep in mind that at this time she was in her mid-50s, a slender grandmother with gray hair, all of five foot one in her sneakers. She walked up to the man and asked him, “What are you looking for? Maybe I can help you find it.”

She said later he looked like a little boy who was about ready to burst into tears. He told her he had gotten badly sunburned the day before. He’d hardly slept that night because his sunburn hurt, and he was trying to find some ointment to relieve the pain and help heal his sunburn.

Jan took him along to the pharmacy, grabbing her shampoo along the way, and helped him find some aloe vera lotion and a pain reliever. They went back to the checkout together. He told her this was his first trip to the rally, he really liked the Black Hills, and next year he hoped to bring his wife along—and if Jan wanted a ride on his Harley all she had to do was ask.

She declined the ride, but sent him on his way with a smile and a warm handshake—a gentle one, because of the sunburn. She went home with a good feeling along with her shampoo, and he went home to Indiana with a peeling sunburn and a positive memory of Rapid City.

Of all the people in the store that day, Jan was the only one brave enough to approach this scary looking guy. She was the only one with the compassion and the insight to look past his tattoos and his angry face to see the perfectly ordinary person who was tired and hurting and just needed a little assistance.

The moral of this story is: Don’t be afraid to look a little deeper than what you see on the surface. There’s much more to any of us than the way we look on the outside. Elegant fashions, grubby work clothes, or grimy leathers aren’t who we are, they’re merely what we’re wearing. Never be too quick to judge a bird by its feathers—or a biker by his tattoos.

There’s following the rules, and then there’s following the rules creatively.

A few days ago a conversation with my daughter reminded me of one of my favorite memories from a family trip some years ago. My late husband and I, with the three youngest kids, flew in his small plane to visit relatives in Michigan. A six-hour trip with only one brief stop for food and fuel, it wasn’t the most exciting mode of travel even for kids who were good travelers. The plane was too noisy for comfortable conversation, the quarters were cramped for five people, and the absolute rule was that they had to stay in their seats with their safety belts fastened.

About halfway across Lake Michigan, I looked back to see how the kids were doing. There were the two girls, dutifully buckled in, reading their books and munching grapes out of a plastic bowl on the seat between them. It was a perfectly ordinary picture—except that they were upside down. Their hair was brushing the floor and their gangly tanned legs and bare feet were propped against the backs of their seats.

Their younger brother in the tiny seat behind them may not have appreciated the feet waving in his face, but for the girls it was a perfect solution to the boredom and discomfort of sitting in one place for so long. They were following the rules to the letter: they were in their seats with their seat belts on. Nobody had said they had to be right side up.

The buzzword for being creative, a cliché by now, is to think outside the box. Sometimes maybe it works better just to turn the box upside down.

This morning I listened to a conversation between two fly fishermen. They were talking about using one’s wrist properly when you cast, and how someone else they knew was so good he could adjust the line in mid-cast, and the difference between dry flies and some other kind of flies (okay, so I wasn’t listening all that closely). They were having a wonderful time.

Apparently, they also have a wonderful time when they go fishing. It just sounds like work to me—especially because, after going to all that trouble, when they do catch a fish they just put it back.

When I was a child on a South Dakota farm, fishing wasn’t a sport on quite that level. It was a family outing for summer evenings or those days after a rain when it was too muddy for field work. We’d dig some worms, pile into the pickup with our bamboo poles, and head for a nearby stock dam.

For some reason, my father would always take his rod and tackle box and go to the opposite side of the dam. My mother got to help us kids fish. What with selecting the fattest worms and waiting for them to unwind from around our fingers so we could put them on the hook, untangling lines, watching dragonflies, finding just the right flat rocks to sit on, floating sticks on the water, and making sure the little kids didn’t fall in, somehow not a lot of real fishing got done.

Every now and then, though, one of us would catch a fish. Pulling it in was fun, especially if it was a bluegill and fought all the way to shore. But then somebody had to take it off the hook. After we got a little older, Mother wouldn’t do it for us, not even for the bullheads with their ugly green smiles and sharp whiskers. Sometimes the fish would flop off the hook by itself if we left it on the bank for a little while, but most of the time it was eventually necessary to lay hands on the slimy, slippery thing and take the hook out.

After we got old enough, we learned to help clean fish. As a fun activity, cleaning fish ranks right up there with going to the dentist. Of course, it did make us popular with all the cats, who always gathered around to watch and to wait for their share.

Finally, of course, would come eating the fish. Fresh perch or bluegills, breaded and fried the way my mother cooks them, are perfectly okay eating. But to me, they’re really not worth all the trouble of catching and cleaning them. It’s a heck of a lot easier to just put some chicken breasts in the crock pot.

In spite of all this, I actually do enjoy going fishing. I like the quiet of a small stock dam on a summer evening when the sun is just going down and the water is so still you can see yourself in it. I like the murmuring beauty of a shaded Black Hills creek. I like the drowsy peacefulness of sitting on a sun-warmed rock on a lazy afternoon. I like watching nursery schools of infant minnows drift by or seeing trout swirl to the surface. I just don’t like having all those pleasant inactivities interrupted by occasionally—despite my best intentions—catching a fish.

So now, if I go fishing, it’s as the designated non-fisherman. I trail along with a fisherman dedicated enough to pay attention to the fish and leave me in peace.

Then I find a just-right rock or a comfortable place on the bank in the sun. And I sit. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I sketch. Sometimes I watch dragonflies and butterflies, find shapes in the clouds, listen to the birds, or pull long weeds and nibble on the stems. It’s relaxing, enjoyable, and quite fish-free.

I don’t have to trouble myself with finding the right fly, or remembering to bring the bait, or untangling a line from trees or snags. I don’t bother the fish, and they don’t bother me. All of us are happier that way. 

Just in time for Independence Day, the Senate has again rejected a Constitutional amendment to prohibit desecration of the United States flag. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the amendment failed by only one vote.

When we recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag, we aren’t really stating our dedication to the flag, but to the country of which it is a symbol. The flag in itself is just a construction of red, white, and blue fabric. What we honor when we salute the flag is the pride, the history, and the freedom that it represents.

I feel privileged to live in the United States. I am deeply proud of this country and its history. I absolutely believe that each of us has a responsibility to protect our way of life and our ideals.

One of the most important of those ideals—one we should never take for granted—is freedom of speech. I can write letters to the editor expressing completely outrageous opinions, and the only consequence is likely to be other people writing equally outrageous letters back. I can rant in a public place about Congress or the President or the mayor, and nobody is going to burst through the door and haul me off to jail.

And, if I feel it necessary in order to make my voice heard, I can plant myself in a visible public spot and set a flag on fire. Among the freedoms our flag symbolizes is the freedom to burn one. The Supreme Court has ruled more than once that burning an American flag is Constitutionally protected free speech. That is a freedom we need to preserve.

Freedom of speech is not limited to speech that the majority agrees with. It is not limited to courteous, dignified, or sensible discourse. Accepting and living that freedom means tolerating even expressions—such as burning a flag—that we may find repulsive or outrageous.

The Flag Code sets out the appropriate way to treat the flag that represents our country. It specifies that the flag should never be used for any advertising purpose or printed on anything meant to be used and disposed of. It also states that the flag should not be used as part of a costume or athletic uniform, except that a flag patch may be used on the uniform of military personnel, fireman, policeman and members of patriotic organizations.

Yet, this time of year, it is routine to see flags in ads for Independence Day sales. Tee-shirts, hats, and even swim suits have flag patterns. If you want to go on a Fourth of July picnic, you can buy paper plates and napkins with flags printed on them.

Which person is the true patriot—one who uses the flag in a newspaper ad? One who wears a bikini printed with the flag? One who wipes the ketchup off his chin with a flag-printed napkin? Or one who burns a flag in heartfelt protest?

The only real danger to our flag comes from those who would trivialize it in the name of patriotism. It is a superficial patriot who believes preserving a flag is more important than preserving the liberty it represents. Bully for the Senators who took their patriotism seriously enough to stand against a constitutional amendment to outlaw flag burning. Such a law would be a long and dangerous first step toward restricting one of this nation’s most fundamental liberties.

My parents visited me for a couple of days recently because my dad had appointments with the cardiologist. They are in their early 80s, with some health problems but still active, capable, and very much themselves. They still live on the farm where I grew up.

We had a good time while they were here, and for some reason I was reminded of a time years ago when I visited them. It was not long after I had moved to Rapid City, and my two kids were still young. This was in the early spring, probably at Easter.

The night before we were to leave for home, there was a heavy rain. The next morning I had to drive five miles of gravel road to get to the highway. This is in the south central part of the state, where mud is real mud—heavy, sticky gumbo. It builds up on your boots till you’re six inches taller and walking like John Wayne wearing Ginger Rogers’ high heels. When it dries, you have to chip it off with a chisel. Once my sister and brother-in-law got thoroughly stuck in my parents’ lane. A year or so later, they had some work done on the car and the mechanic had it up on the hoist. He asked them, "What’s that stuff stuck under here? Concrete?"

This was what I had to drive through. There was gravel on top of it, but I knew if I slipped off onto the shoulder of the road I would be in real trouble. I was a little worried about getting through with my little Datsun station wagon, but I loaded the kids into the car and started out. We slipped and slid a few times, but we made it.

After I got home, I called to let my parents know we had gotten home with no problems. My father happened to answer the phone. I said I hadn’t had any trouble getting through the mud. He chuckled and said, "You didn’t know you had a guardian angel following you, did you?"

After I left, he had gotten into the pickup and driven a half mile behind me all the way to the highway, just in case I slid off the road and needed some help.

My dad is not someone who says, "I love you." He doesn’t fuss or get emotional. Yet what he did that day said, "I love you," as clearly as if he had shouted it.

More clearly, in fact. He could have told us goodbye with big, warm hugs and said, "I love you"—and then stayed comfortably in the warm house with another cup of coffee. Instead, he put on his coveralls, went out to the pickup, and drove five miles through the mud to the highway and five miles back. He was there behind me just in case I needed him.

Last week, while my parents were here, I took them to the doctor’s office and the other places they wanted to go. They can get to my house with no trouble, but they aren’t comfortable driving in city traffic any more than they have to. The morning they were to leave, I drove my car to the clinic and they followed me. When my dad had seen the doctor, they started for home. It’s easy enough to find the way—straight up Fifth Street, all the way through town to the interstate. I knew they wouldn’t have any trouble.

Still, when they pulled out of the parking lot, I waited a minute or two and then pulled out behind them. Staying back far enough so they wouldn’t notice me, I followed them part way through town, until I knew they were well on their way to the highway.
It really wasn’t necessary, but it felt like the right thing to do. I was there behind them just in case they needed me.

That’s just a little something I learned from my dad.

One evening several years ago, I had to make a quick trip to the grocery store. I hurried out of the house, got into my station wagon that was parked in the dark driveway, and started the car. As I glanced over my shoulder to start backing up, two dark shapes leaped up from the darkness behind the back seat.

They shouted “Boo!” I screeched. When my heart had stopped racing and I was able to breathe again, I explained calmly and reasonably to my daughter and stepdaughter that if they ever did that to me again I would ground them and take away their allowances until they were 85.

They apologized. They really didn’t intend to frighten me into a heart attack. They didn’t know their prank had triggered a fear I had had since I was much younger than they were. When I was a little kid I was afraid of the dark. Not the dark itself, really, but all the nameless, formless Things that might be hidden in it.

I remember on summer evenings, especially when cousins were visiting, we kids would play outside after supper. The sun would go down, and the twilight would begin to deepen into dusk. The change happened so gradually that we scarcely noticed the darkness. Eventually, though, someone would turn on the yard light. Suddenly our arena for play narrowed to the spotlighted stage between the yard light and the house. Beyond the circle of light lay an ominous dark territory where we didn’t dare trespass.

Even that wasn’t so bad; as long as there were several of us, there was safety in numbers. The experience that was truly frightening was one I sometimes had to do all by myself—going out in the dusk to shut the door to the chicken coop.

Every spring my mother would buy a couple of hundred baby chicks. They were kept in a brooder coop out by the well, quite a long way from the house. At first, when they were cute yellow balls of fluff, they were kept shut up with heat lamps to keep them warm. As they got older, though, turning into homely adolescents with scraggly feathers and meager combs, they were turned outside during the day. As it started to get dark, they would head back into the coop to roost. Somebody had to go out and close the door, to protect them from marauding skunks, civet cats, and raccoons. Too often for comfort, that somebody was me.

This wasn’t so bad as long as it wasn’t quite dark yet. But on those nights when full darkness had fallen, this chore turned into a task straight out of a Boris Karloff movie.

Getting to the chicken coop meant making a long walk parallel to a strip of trees that served as a windbreak. In the daytime they were perfectly ordinary rows of Chinese elms. After dark, though, they turned into looming, menacing shapes capable of hiding anything from lions to tigers to bears.

I never knew whether taking a flashlight made things better or worse. True, using one meant I could see where I was going. But it also advertised my presence to whatever might be out there in the dark. It felt as if that bobbing circle of light was a beacon announcing, “Hey, guys—she’s right over here! Come and get it!”

The trip out to the chicken coop, one breathless step at a time away from the shelter of the house, was scary enough. I would finally get there, close the door on the murmuring birds, and latch it. Now came the worst part of the journey, the return. It meant turning my back on the menacing darkness and everything lurking in it.

I could see the lighted windows of the house, which seemed an impossibly long distance away. They represented safety. The challenge was to get there.

I’d start walking, carefully so I wouldn’t trip over anything in the dark, quietly so nothing would notice me. At this stage, I never ran. Running only made it worse, because it felt as if whatever was behind me was getting closer and closer, and if I tripped and fell it would get me for sure. But as I walked, I kept moving a little faster and a little faster. Past the looming dark shape that in the daytime was the combine. Past the old machine shed and the car bodies behind it where anything might be hiding. Past the first granary. Past the second one. Past the tool shed. By now I was almost to safety. Probably they weren’t going to get me this time.

And now I was onto the packed dirt closer to the house and I could start running—faster and faster, past the yard light, past the car and the pickup, through the gate, into the yard, up the steps, through the porch, and into the light and safety of the kitchen, panting and out of breath. But safe.

Until the next time.