Coming Clean

Sheesh. After two of perhaps the funniest stories I’ve had to tell, Lisa had to go drop THAT bomb on me. Well, anyways… things are on a good footing again with me and the missuss. She even kissed me today and told me how much she loved me. This is a nice turn from feeling like I suck like a bottom feeder.

So, I need to lighten the mood of this blog in the process, especially in consideration of what I plan on blogging over the next month so. So first, a story.

Last night and today I watched A River Runs Through It. If I’m watching it alone, I’ll cry like a baby. If someone is with me, I can’t cry. There’s very few times when I cry with people around. I don’t know why. Crying alone is so… lonely.

ANYWAYS! So, the movie reminds me a lot of my life with my father and my brother. I don’t have anywhere near the sadness of Norman’s loss, but I do share in his exuberant joy and love for his brother and father. So, I will tell a tale of my brother and me.

This particular story is fitting for today. Today, ice covers everything outside. Trees, trashcans, mailboxes: all encased in a quarter inch or more of ice. And, if you hadn’t guessed, it is cold.

I spent many a cold day wandering the wood behind my parents house with my brother. And on the best and coldest of days, the lake would freeze. But with this particular story, the lake did not freeze because it was drained, and instead we had frozen mud.

Being boys, we could not resist the lure of a frozen muddy lake. Much of it was frozen mud puddles, and so we felt like quite the daredevils walking out on this frozen mud-puddle ice. We were perhaps 20 feet out into the lake before we heard what we had not expected to hear. In the south, you only get to hear this sound for a second because the ice does not freeze thick, and before we knew it was the sound of cracking, we had fallen through. We were up to our knees and thighs in freezing mud.

We probably spent two hours trying to get ourselves out. I can remember how the mud formed up like a cement cast around your leg; the cold making your leg go numb. Though I cannot remember it exactly, I believe we worked on getting one leg free at a time: first I would help Michael get a leg out and take a step, then we would get my leg out and take a step, and so on.

It was exhausting, and by the time we were free of the lake, we were so tired we practically crawled home. Our parents met us at the steps behind the house where we were trying to remove our boots. This was a real task because they were a little small to begin with and now they were also filled with mud. I can remember feeling exhausted, frustrated, and finally downright desperate. I cried with anger and anguish; I think my dad was laughing silently. I was ready to cut myself free of the boots when, somehow, my dad was able to magically pull them off.

Our parents were angry with us to be sure, but they did not lecture us that day about the follies of playing on a frozen lake. It was clear we had learned our lesson I think. But I’ll never forget that day, either. How in a desperate situation, one where I could have likely died had I been there alone, I had my brother at my side helping me home, and parents waiting for us to bring us inside. That’s not the way it is for everyone, but it is the way it has always been for me. How very fortunate and blessed I am.