A Childhood Story

The rain was pouring down. The rain droplets fell so hard that they beat my eye lids like percussionist sympathy. You see, one thing about beatings was whether it was just rain or life, as bad as they hurt, it made you very hesitant not to make that mistake again. In some instances, you learn, which leads you to these moments like this, me standing here, as the lighting Boltz dance crossed the sky. It took me back to my childhood, dancing around amongst the vast rows of corn fields. They stretched out as far as the eyes could see. I think I always played Russian Roulette with danger. I could hear my grandpa's harsh, brass, but sweet voice screaming.

“Move out the way Nelly!” with a facial expression of freight.

 The funny thing was, it was like I was playing hide and seek with Thelma. This is what my grandpa named his corn plow after my dear old grandma died in these very same corn fields I played in as a ballerina or Opera singer, or anything else you could think of, besides, who needs friends when I could make them up and place identities on the induvial corn stocks that were as tall as my 8-year-old frame. I would dance and sway my arms and move about carelessly always finding myself in the death grips of Thelma. Grandpa turned old Thelma off and hopped down. I stood there in front of her dirt-filled claws that ripped my friends right out of the ground. The fresh smell of the soil always made me feel nauseous. I just knew I had made papa mad.

“Na child, I’m trying to figure out how you always land dead smack in the middle of my sweet ole Thelma,” Grandpa quizzed, as he rubbed my black hair filled with corn husk shavings from rolling around the fields.

I had no response. My imagination was still fixed on how I came face to face with danger just 5 minutes earlier. I never understood why Grandpa named his plow after Granny because she was such a sweet soul. Of course, I had never seen a soul or had no idea what a soul was. I would just hear my granny say that to me as she rubbed my puffy brown cheeks as we sipped our freshly squeezed lemonade while sitting in our white Adirondack chairs that Grandpa and my momma built together when she was a little girl.

“Come on youngster, Let’s go for a walk,” Grandpa took his big strong arms and hands and swung me up in the air almost up to the moon like a Nasa rocket ship.

Grandpa was a very tall man. He stood there in his red and tan rustic dingy plaid logged sleeve shirt. To which the sleeves were always rolled up. A concept my 8-year-old mind could not grasp. He had dingy blue overalls that looked dingy and as if cream our blank and white speckled-faced dog chewed them up like he did everything else. All grandpas’ clothes looked this way.

“Grandpa, I have a question,” I asked examining his long beard sweaty black beard tan colored homemade stitched straw hat. Grandpa’s eyes were deep brown, kind, and gentle to look at.

“Yes, my sweet Nelly, ask me one of those peculiar questions that dance around in your little mind at 100 miles per hour, sure,” He laughed as he put me on his big broad shoulders. This was my favorite place because I loved the view up here. I could see our 6-bedroom modernized rustic style cabin and the lay of the land embraced in all the yellow from the rows and rows of corn and daisies that belonged to grandma before she died, and that’s exactly where we headed to visit her soul.

“Grandpa, why are yo clothes so dirty all the time?” I ask while tapping on Grandpa’s hat as if it were a snare drum.

“Na, Nelly I have done told you that clothes don’t make a man, It’s the heart of a man to take care of the people he loves, and that’s God's law, you gone argue with God,” he laughed in his roar of a voice that felt like he made the daisy sway along with the wind.

He placed my black Mary Jane shoes firmly on the ground as I watch him stare at the rocks and daisies, they lay around my grandma's resting place.

“Nelly, you know what to do,”

“I know Grandpa, go find fresh Daisies for Grandma Thelma,” I said pretending as if I was going to find daisies. I was going to my hiding spot because from there I watched Grandpa.

The silent tears fell from his hairy cheeks onto the soil that held Grandma’s soul. I watched Grandpa kneel, cuffing some of the soil in his hand, he took one big smell and wept for her, being careful not to be so loud in fear that my small ears would hear.

I walked up quietly with fresh flowers.

“You know Nelly, I loved your grandmother with every fiber and bone in my body. I miss her so much; I wrapped my long skinny arms around Grandpa until the sunset fell.

My grandpa used to say he wished he could just disappear and be with my dear old grandma, and in my mind, he had done just that disappeared. Looking back at that as I stood in this storm and wept the same way my grandpa did when we would walk to visit Granny. I kneeled and smelled the soil of both my grandparents as their souls rested beside each other. I had left home and forgotten where I'd come from. I had gotten caught up in the imagery world of what I would call the pretenders. All the life lessons my grandpa taught me made me who I was, and I became too busy to even come and visit. Now, I was a grown woman, successful, educated, and married to a wonderful man who was just like my pa gentle, humble, and firm. The neighbor informed me that Grandpa had died peacefully in bed with a single daisy and a picture of Grandma, my mother, and me when I was a baby. Grandpa never bothered me nor intruded on me, and I never paid attention when 2 years passed, and the calls stopped coming.

He had already been gone 2 years before I knew it. He left his whole estate to me. The land was still beautiful just the way it was the day I left when I was 18. All I could do was lay on the ground next to Grandpa and cry full of regret. I could hear my grandpa's voice saying don’t waste your thoughts on regrets. Man gone do what’s in his heart and remember everything you do you must take it with God so make not brilliant, but wise choices. I thought of this as I lay here and admired my good ole childhood friend Thelma the plow sitting there rusty by still digging her claws in the dirt.