Monday, April 23, 2007

AMENDED HEART

"Remember my turtle, the one we rescued? The one that got run over?" It is a stretch to go back over all of those years, sort through all of those turtles moved to safety, out of harms path, always moving them along in the same direction they were going, so they didn't have to turn around and start all over again.

What made this turtle special was my daughter's innocent idealism. It is difficult to ignore a passionate three-year-old in the throes ofdetermination. She had learned her lesson in caring well, and was about to learn an even harder one now. Or so I thought.

"He's dying," I told her gently. "NO HE'S NOT!" she screamed, tears splashing down swollen cheeks; boogers bubbling out of her nose and onto he lips. "Let's move him into the ditch," I suggest. "Let's take him home," she insisted!

This turtle had been creased down the middle, cracked in half. Not a happy camper. None of us were at this point. Putting him into an old burlap sack seemed to be adding insult to injury, and there is no kind description for the smell of a freaked out, broken turtle.

I pictured a somber funeral under the lilac bush. He wouldn't fit in a shoebox. I glanced over at my sweetie, lapping up traces of snot, eyes shiny bright like the world after a cloudburst. My heart is swelling with all of life's lessons that lay ahead.

This one became a lesson in faith. I expected the worst. She knew better. Put him in a tractor tire. Tended him. Named him. Loved him. Set him free.

Now, years later, she returns from a stroll around the pond with her boyfriend. "Remember my turtle?" I stare into the past. Time merges that headstrong tot with this confidant young woman. She smiles. "When his shell mended, it grew in the shape of a heart." The shape of possibilities.