Q and A

“Hey!”  Whoever it is isn’t talking to me.  “Hey!”  Then again, maybe she is.  I stop and turn to see a little girl, about three, I’d guess, sitting in a buggy, legs dangling through the square steel holes.  Her skin is the smooth brown of a Hershey bar and her eyes are round and dark.  

“Are you talking to me?”  I ask.  

She nods without smiling and then points to an empty buggy in the aisle ahead of her.  “Whose that?” she asks.

The young woman I presume to be her mother pauses in her examination of the 50-percent off Easter candy to figure out what the child is doing stopping and asking questions of a stranger.  I give the woman a quick glance, the glance that asks, “Is it all right for me to talk to you child?”  I receive in return the glance that says, “I can see you are not a kidnapper or child molester.  Yes, you may talk to my child.”

I take a step closer to the buggy.  “I don’t really know,” I offer.  “Now let me ask you a question.  Why did you ask me?”

She shrugs her shoulders and tilts her head, lifts her tiny little hands so that, for a moment, she looks like the Bird Girl in Bonaventure Cemetery.

“Do I just look like somebody who would know the answer to questions?”  I tease.  She nods shyly.  “Well, in fact, I do know the answer to every question in the world.  Except that one.  I do not know who that buggy belongs to.”

I take yet another step closer.  “What’s your name?”  She tells me.  “I’m Kathy,” I say, extending my hand.  “It was very nice to meet you.”  We shake hands and wave goodbye.  I walk off smiling.

Not long ago, I came across a news article that included a black-and-white photograph that grabbed not just my attention, but my gut as well.  It took my breath, it seized my heart, it possessed my conscious world for the few seconds that was required for my brain to absorb the story it told:

He stands, not at attention or even parade rest, but with one knee just barely bent.  A paunch, only a slight one, hangs over his belt.  It is warm weather, maybe even hot.  I can tell because the sleeves on his uniform shirt, the creases pressed into them by a hot iron, are short.  A patch in the shape of the state of Georgia is sewn on his left bicep; the state seal is embroidered on the patch, along with the words “Georgia State Patrol.”

He is wearing aviator sunglasses and a helmet, the kind with the hard plastic visor.  In front of him is a riot shield.   It is propped on the ground, held steady by two large hands.  He wears a watch and a wedding band.

Despite the helmet, the shield, and the heavy weaponry strapped around his waist and over his shoulders, he does  not appear to be on edge.  Whatever threat prompted his turnout, along with that of the other similarly outfitted men around him, is not great or imminent.

Standing in front of his shield is a small child, two or three years old.  The child – It is impossible to tell whether boy or girl. – is wearing tennis shoes, the kind with a thick, spongy tongue.  The shoestrings are long and hang in loose loops that touch the street.  The child is wearing a white robe tied at his waist, a white cape tied at his neck, and a tall white cap, the unmistakable tall white cap of the Ku Klux Klan. 

The child’s attention has been caught by a reflection in the riot shield, his own reflection, and the photographer freezes the exact moment when the chubby hand of the child meets the chubby hand of the reflection, the moment when the two hands touch.  The State Trooper is watching, looking down at the child in the Ku Klux Klan cap as he reaches for himself.

The State Trooper, in case I forgot to mention, is black.

I stare at the image and the only thought I can articulate is, “ What kind of person dresses a toddler in hatred and puts him in a parade?”

I love words, but images can be equally powerful.  I look at this one over and over and, on this night, I feel a compulsion, an instinctual impulse to go find the little girl who thought I could answer her question, to search as long and as far as it takes to be able to look into her sweet, sweet face and tell her that for some questions there are no answers.

Copyright 2014

Hut, One, Two!

I know exactly when I fell in love with sports.

The sky was gray; the air was chill.  I was sitting on the living room floor, not yet tall enough to block Daddy’s view of the sharp-edged console television on which the two of us were watching a grainy black-and-white telecast of his and, thus, my Baltimore Colts.  The players’ legs, moving up and down in unnaturally sharp angles like pistons, were skinny.   Their arms were even skinnier, protruding nakedly from the thick bottle cap of shoulder pads clamped down over each helmeted head.

I’d been engaging in this Sunday afternoon ritual long enough to know the basic rules, understand the most frequently called penalties, and anticipate the moments of high drama.  I knew when commentary was appropriate and when it was better to remain dejectedly silent.  The movements no longer appeared frantic or random.  

But I was still learning and Daddy was infinitely patient in answering whatever questions I posed.  On this particular Sunday, the question arose as the quarterback (I don’t remember if it was Johnny Unitas or the wannabe on the other team.) dropped back to pass and the entire defensive line charged toward him like mad bulls.  The entire play collapsed and the broadcaster’s voice, a scratchy baritone, floated over the room, “The blitz results in a loss of ten yards on the play.”

Blitz.  What a funny word.  It sounded like a nickname for one of Santa’s reindeer.  It rhymed with glitz.  And that malt liquor with the red bull on the can.  It required lips and teeth and tongue in a rapid sequence that resulted in only one syllable.  Blitz.  

“Daddy, what’s a blitz?”

“It’s when all the players on the other team come after the quarterback.  For that one play they don’t have any other job.”  

I rolled it around in my mouth.  It felt like something that would approach hard and fast.  It tasted like something powerful.  Blitz.  I had just fallen in love.

Not long ago I came across another word I didn’t know.  I was reading a book about a spiritual journey and, though the author explained its definition and usage, I had to do my own research.  

“Repechage” is used primarily in rowing.  It is the method by which a competitor which loses in an early round is given another opportunity –  a second chance – to compete later in the bracket.   It’s from the French word that means “fishing out” or “rescuing.”  It sounds a lot like grace.  Port and starboard grace.  Sculling grace.  Sweeping grace.  Grace in the middle of a cox and eight.  

And what of baseball and its sacrifice?  The runner’s ultimate goal of making it home?  There is grace, too, on a baseball diamond.  And an ice rink.  And a track.

I fell in love with sports in the moment of the blitz.  The moment in which physical exertion for competition and entertainment became inextricably meshed with words (not to mention my daddy).  Words that carry me far beyond the muscles and tendons that stretch and contract in extraordinary feats of physicality.  Words that themselves stretch and contract in meaning and metaphor.  Words that preserve and redeem and baptize all my days with grace.

Copyright 2014