How would God respond to making a mistake? Would planets collide or mountains slide into the sea? Or would the ledger of all life simply remain out kilter until a series of small events forced that ledger back into balance again? It's probably the l...
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August 3, 6:55AM
Leasburg, Missouri
Happiness rarely lasts an entire night. I just wish I knew why it disappears so quickly.
When I was four or five, my mother told me to wake up each morning with a happy thought. She said that I should open my eyes and be amazed at the first thing I saw. Last night, I never made it to a bed and the first thing I saw this morning was a policeman. That can't make anyone too happy.
At about 5AM, the officer tapped on the window of my car. When he asked me if I was okay, I was stuck in the middle of a dream and I was about to say, "I am Dædalus." But I'm glad I didn't or he might have arrested for being nuts. Instead, I just started the car and began driving. After that, he was off to tap on other windows further down the street.
I am Dædalus. It was part of a dream, but even now I've lost most of the details. I remember that there were no wax wings and no one flying too close to the sun. There was just a beautiful lake with water that changed colors. Whatever the color of the sky or however deep the green of the leaves, the lake would become that color. On gray days, the lake was gray. On blue-sky days, it was blue. And on the longest summer days, it was green.
I sat there at the water's edge watching the colors change and felt like I could sleep forever. At first, the taps on the window were little pebbles that fell into the lake from the sky. But before the first of the ripples reached me on the shore, I was awake and forgetting the rest of the dream.
For those first few seconds after waking up, I felt like I really was Dædalus. But I couldn't remember if he was the one he flew too close to the sun or the other one who was always too careful. Regardless, I'm now just another driver in another car. Like all the rest of them, I pay too little attention to the road. I squirm when I'm tired. I turn on my lights when it's dark, and I flip on the wipers when it's raining. I'm nothing special anymore and I guess that's all I ever was.
⌂⌂⌂
It was still drizzling when I left St. Louis. As I headed south, I saw a line of clouds gather in the sky in front of me. Puffs of gray and blue and white that would lead me to Texas. An occasional large drop of rain thumped onto the roof, but mostly the world was quiet. I heard a clicking sound from the engine and silently prayed that there was nothing wrong with the car.
I didn't plan on sleeping in the tiny town of Leasburg overnight. I just pulled off the highway for a few minutes because this is the town where my father grew up and where my grandmother spent her whole life. When I was three and Ma was sick, I lived here for a year. It doesn't look any different today than it did 35 or 40 years ago. If I had time, I could tell you about all the special places in town. I could walk you to the top of Cooper's Hill or show you the place where Grandmother killed the copperhead. Down the street is where my father saved a little boy who fell into a well. The hole in the ground might still be there. All the houses back then had wells and outhouses. Even my grandmother's house had no plumbing. When I sat in her outhouse, I liked to listen to the flies buzzing below me. Does that seem strange, Buddy? I don't know. Maybe it's just a boy thing.
