Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Sad (07/26/07)
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TITLE: Blindness to Love | Previous Challenge Entry
By Emily Ritter
08/02/07 -
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Sadness is a man who walks into the glory of God, and walks away unchanged or moved for lack of notice.
His feet, warmed and gently pulsing from a jog, scuff along the dazzling grains of sand as he walks alone toward the ocean. The dusty brown hair on his head is flattened with sweat and scooped to the side, and the vein that protrudes an inch above his nose lay exposed, showing his age. His mind is bottled in innumerable tasks that have nowhere to find release, bouncing back and forth and back and forth collecting absurdity in each repeated lap. Like brick walls around his brain that are being slid and crushed in too small of a space, he worries about misplaced work documents and the price he paid on gas to get to this family vacation.
He slumps down over an irregular bolder, his knees slightly bent but straining to hold his back over in a contorted slouch. Giving up the struggle to remain upright, he lies on the ground and disregards the sand that coats where his sweat hasn’t dried.
Upon closing his eyes, his ears ring with the sound of his wife, “Jimmy, come for dinner.” Pattering feet run with shovel and pail in hand, neatly cuffed plaid shorts are smoothed by Jimmy’s four-year-old fingers just before slowing his steps into the summerhouse. “Where’s daddy?” Dad, from the beach, hears his hope-filled son ask. But Dad doesn’t bother to hear the answer; he lurches his body to sleep on the beach, as if thieving sleep from an unwilling supplier.
Dusk falls over his limbs, and crabs make their night crawls with collections of coiled shells.
All at once, he’s given over into God’s gentleness. Only in sleep, his body, mind, and will unite with God’s, and he becomes part of the picture.
“Daddy.” “Daddy…” Two patient eyes meet his, there, flat on the beach, in the night. When he opens his eyes to see the huge smile of a four-year-old, the love and anticipation, he stares for a second, just to wake up, then glances aside, pushing up as if uninterrupted, as if the wind happened to wake him.
Like a puppy, just given a home, Jimmy follows his father’s normal stride, skipping at times to keep up, and keeps his eye on home…the place they’re journeying to. Mommy’s at the top of the cliff, on a grassy overhang, perched like a lighthouse. Dad looks through her, justified by his job and interrupted sleep, and continues to swing his hands in disregard. Like a skater on ice, honored with hush from snow falling at her feet as she passes, Mommy walks behind them.
From the open door she can see her husband in the dark living room as if he’s fallen injured on the couch. One leg is stretched straight and awkward, and the other calf smashed between the flowery silk cushions of her davenport. Dirty sand wafts towards her in puffs from snores and masks the comforting airy scent of summer and home that she anticipates with joy, even at dark.
Turning toward her bedroom, she sees the shadow of a little head, curled up on the rug beneath Dad. Frozen in the blindness of Jimmy’s affection, and just frozen by her own lack of emotion towards this familiar scenario, she scoops a pillow up from the adjacent chair and neatly tucks it under Jimmy’s head.
Turning again to go, she sees the matching pillow, and pausing, inches it gently beneath her husband’s awkwardly strewn leg, for support and comfort to last the night. “He’ll need it in the morning,” she thinks. She stands for a moment, letting her figure shadow the moonlight rising over the squiggled image of her husband on the couch. In the silence, she pans the room with the light in her eyes and decides to let her Jimmy sleep there, for as long as he'd like, and as many nights as his heart can stand.
Let your gentleness be evident to all -Philippians 4:4
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Some minor tweaking for a few tense inconsistencies and other piddly items--and this is ready to be in an anthology of short stories.
Your voice, your writing style--very mature and literary. I loved this.
Nicely done!