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Difficult Terrain

FROM
Break Out: Finding Freedom
When You Don't Quite Fit The Mold
James R. Hasse

"First keep the peace within yourself,
then you can also bring peace to others."

Thomas A. Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

He had never let me down. Even when the going got tough, he had never dropped me.

It is real to this day. I hear him grunt under my weight. With my frail body wrapped around his beefy back -- my feet dangling as he clutches my knees and holds them firmly against his waist -- I grab at his surprisingly small shoulders, locking my thin arms around his neck. I dig my chin into the back of his neck, trusting he will not fall.

Paul is three years younger than me, yet at 10 he can haul me on his back along the dusty cow paths and across the rippling creek in our Back Forty.

I can feel his small feet search tentatively for the next step in the dirt path, avoiding half-exposed rocks and sun-baked cow pies. We are both just the right size so piggyback riding works.

We knew and understood each other's needs back then in a simplistic way that we had lost over the years and now, 37 years later, would never regain.

But, we probably didn't really know each other at all -- not as high schoolers, college students or mature adults -- even though Paul instinctively knew when I needed a supporting hand to keep my balance or a relevant comment to help a stranger understand my garbled speech.

"I'm going to walk up the ravine a little ways," Pam announced, breaking my thoughts. Her voice sounded startlingly close as she suddenly appeared out of a thicket down by the gurgling stream.

"Look what I found," Pam said slowly, almost to herself, as she came up the knoll. She was using a gnarled but sturdy piece of a thick tree branch, long stripped of its leaves and twigs, as a walking stick. "Just the right size."

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