The Time Between Seconds

Feeling Blue

"No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn."

- Hal Borland

Three children are sitting on a log near a stream. One of them looks up at the sky and frowns. "What does a little blue feel like?" He asks, thinking about his older sister's reply when he had asked if she wanted to go swimming: "No, I just need some time alone. I feel a little blue."

Alone he understands, but feeling blue?

"We had a cat named Blue," The girl next to him says, as she uses her finger to draw lines and pictures in the dirt at her feet. "She was warm and fluffy, but she didn't like being touched. She hissed all the time."

"A blue parrot almost bit my finger off!" The other boy exclaims, holding up his finger. "It had a ginormous beak!" The boy leaps up, after having said this, discarding the conversation and starts skipping rocks on the surface of the slow running stream.

The boy frowns again, his sister likes hugs and touch. She is always giving hugs to everyone and she likes being tickled... no matter what she says. If she didn't like it, she wouldn't be laughing. That can't be it, so he looks back at the sky. "Maybe it feels like clouds?" He asks more to himself than to his company. Thinking about that one time they had gotten on a plane and flew far, far, far away from home to go on vacation. But what do clouds feel like?

Do they feel like cotton candy and disappear when you touch it? Or is feeling blue as hard as those round candies Granny always gives him? He shudders, suddenly remembering that one time when he had put his hand into his backpack and found that not only did the ants discover his sweets, but that the sweets had also melted in the sun. That left him with an ant infested, sticky, blue mess that covered both of his school books! It was a complete disaster.

Suddenly he realizes how hot it is and looks at the stream longingly as another rock splashes into the water, after having skipped twice. He and his friends aren't aloud to swim without supervision. A fact which makes him angry, he doesn't understand that either. Everyone knows there's no such thing as super-vision, so why can't he swim without it? Since he can remember he's been swimming with regular vision, so why does his mom keep saying he can't? The only reason he's not swimming is because somehow their parents always know – it's like they have cameras in the trees.

Usually his sister would accompany them whenever they wanted to swim, but today she's feeling blue and nobody else would come along. So now the three friends are left sitting on a log (or throwing rocks), all geared up to swim, but forced to stay.

So far, they've played every game they could think of, but after you've fallen asleep twice while playing hide and seek it's a clear sign to stop playing and do something else.

The boy looks at the reflection of the sky in the moving water and a thought occurs to him. What if feeling blue is like water? Cold, not safe – like mom always says – and it makes your skin all wrinkly? It makes you look old because you don't smile but frown all the time.

What if feeling blue is more like blue berries rather than sweets? Blue berries always look good and everyone always makes such a fuss about them, but to him they're utterly tasteless!

What if it's like that time when he accidentally swallowed a coin and couldn't breathe? They told him afterwards that he was turning blue and that was why he had to go to the hospital.

His poor sister! If feeling blue is anything like turning blue, she must feel very bad!

That night as his sister was making her way to the dinner table, her brother gave her a hug and told her, "I know you will be better soon – I asked Jesus to make you feel bright yellow tomorrow."