Even Friday Is Crying
What a difference two days can make.
Two days ago, the morning began with one of those sunrises that makes you stop whatever you’re doing and just look.
The sun was coming up through the notch in the mountains, spilling its light across the sky and turning the clouds gold. For a few moments, it looked as though we were in for one of those beautiful fall days on God’s Mountain.
And then there was Dolly.
It didn’t take her long to offset all that peaceful serenity with her latest round of follies. Around here, apparently, you’re allowed only so much tranquility before one of the animals decides you’ve had enough.
Dolly had made life in the barn anything but tranquil.
She was in one of those moods.
She was beating the living tar out of anything that moved. Nobody seemed to be exempt, and for reasons known only to Dolly, apparently everybody in the barn had done something to offend her.
Did someone step on her udder while she slept?
The world may never know.
All I know is that I had to intervene three times that morning. Three times I stepped in, broke things up and tried to restore some semblance of order.
Finally, I’d had enough.
I pulled Dolly out altogether.
Peace — such as it ever exists in our barn — was restored.
And looking back now, I wouldn’t mind having Wednesday’s problems again.
Because then came Friday.
I woke this morning to an entirely different mountain.
There was no golden sunrise spilling through the notch. No brilliant light bouncing off the clouds. Instead, the clouds had dropped down into the valley, wrapping themselves around the mountains until parts of them simply disappeared. Rain fell across the meadow, and everything seemed gray and unusually quiet.
Two days earlier, the mountain had awakened in gold.
This morning, it seemed to be crying.
And with everything that had happened this week, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe it understood.
Frankie was gone.
After a year in our home — a year of appointments, doctors, therapy, waiting lists, phone calls, frustrations, battles for services, sleepless nights, laughter, chaos and all the thousand little things that make up everyday life — he had been removed from our custody.
It wasn’t simply that he was gone.
It was how he was taken.
There was no opportunity for a proper goodbye. No chance for us to prepare ourselves, or more importantly, to prepare him. It was handled in a way that, from where we stood, felt deliberately underhanded and cowardly.
The morning Frankie left for respite, though, he seemed to know that something was different.
He looked around at the place that had been his for the past year and said,
“My home?”
Then came the question that still echoes in my mind.
“I come back home?”
“Yes, son. You’ll be coming back.”
Because that’s what we believed.
Before he left, Frankie did something unusual. He ran off to say goodbye to the goats. One by one, he went to each of them — or at least each one that would stand still long enough for a four-year-old boy to say goodbye.
Maybe it meant nothing more than a little boy saying goodbye to his animals before going away for a few days.
But looking back on it now, I can’t help wondering if somehow Frankie sensed what the rest of us didn’t yet know.
He was saying goodbye to his home.
And we had just promised him he was coming back.
He didn’t.
And suddenly, a little boy who had filled our home with noise was no longer here.
People sometimes talk about foster children as though they’re visitors.
They’re not.
Not after you’ve tucked them into bed.
Not after you’ve sat beside them in doctors’ offices and driven hundreds of miles trying to get them the help they need.
Not after you’ve cleaned up their messes, corrected their behavior, celebrated their victories and held them when their world became too much.
Somewhere along the way, without anybody stopping to announce it, they become part of the family.
And when they’re suddenly gone, you discover something else.
Silence can be incredibly loud.
But Friday wasn’t finished.
Our son, Tho’mas, was leaving today for his duty station in Hawaii.
This goodbye was different.
There was sadness, certainly, but there was also pride. This wasn’t a little boy being taken somewhere without our having any say in the matter. This was our grown son stepping forward into his own life and answering his own responsibilities.
Knowing that doesn’t make goodbye particularly easy.
I made the long drive to Spokane International Airport with him.
Eventually, we arrived at that unavoidable moment when there wasn’t anything left to do. The bags were out. Everything had been said — or at least everything you can think to say when you’re standing there knowing somebody you love is about to be thousands of miles away.
We said goodbye.
I told him one last time how proud of him I am, and that I loved him.
Then I watched my son walk away.
I climbed back into the truck, looked at the empty passenger seat, and started the long drive home.
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It was a lonely drive.
There had already been enough emotion for one week, and I suppose my mind was looking for someplace else to go. So I started thinking about all the things I still needed to accomplish that day.
There were chores waiting at home. There were errands that needed doing. There was still plenty of Friday left.
Maybe keeping busy would be a good thing.
I should have known better.
As I came down toward Hunters, I approached one of those turns you don’t take casually.
It’s nearly a hairpin, and when you come into it, you’d better be on your game. There isn’t much room for indecision.
And there are no second chances.
It had been raining, and down there the blacktop was wet. Worse yet, oils had recently been laid on the roadway, making an already wet surface slick.
I came into the turn.
And suddenly —
Bambi.
She seemed to appear out of nowhere.
There was another car coming uphill from the opposite direction. She saw it and tried to correct her course, but everything happened at once. Her little legs scrambled for traction as she tried desperately to change direction on that slick pavement.
I dynamited the brakes.
There was nowhere else for me to go.
The truck tried to stop.
The road wouldn’t let it.
And Bambi lost the fight.
For a moment, I just sat there.
Of all days.
Of all days.
Frankie had been taken from us.
I’d just left my son at the airport and watched him walk away.
And now I’d killed a deer.
I know there was nothing else I could have done. Sometimes an animal comes onto the road so quickly that physics simply takes over.
Knowing that and feeling it are two entirely different things.
I got out of the truck and moved the little deer carefully off the roadway.
And somewhere in the middle of all the sadness, anger, frustration and sheer emotional exhaustion that had accumulated over the past few days, I looked upward and finally said what had been building inside me:
“WHAT NEXT, GOD?”
Apparently, I shouldn’t have asked.
Because I still had one last endeavor for the day.
I pulled down into Hunters and headed for the post office.
I had a package waiting for me — one that had been too big to fit in our mailbox.
One simple errand.
That’s all I wanted.
I pulled in, got out, walked up —
CLOSED FOR LUNCH.
I just stared at it.
You’ve GOT to be kidding me.
At some point, a bad day crosses an invisible line. You’ve been kicked enough times that one more kick doesn’t even hurt.
It just becomes ridiculous.
Frankie was gone.
Tho’mas was headed for Hawaii.
Bambi was lying beside the road.
And now I couldn’t even pick up my package.
I had officially had enough of Friday.
So I climbed back into the truck and pointed it toward home.
This morning, when I looked across the meadow, the mountains were disappearing behind clouds and rain. The whole world seemed unusually somber.
I thought the mountain looked sad.
Several hours later, I understood.
With everything that’s happened this week, it’s no wonder Friday is crying.
Maybe tomorrow the clouds will lift.
Maybe the sun will once again come pouring through that notch in the mountains.
The goats will still need milking. Somebody will undoubtedly get into something they aren’t supposed to. Something will break. Something else will need fixing. And if history is any indication, Dolly will eventually find somebody else who apparently stepped on her udder while she was sleeping.
Life will continue.
It always does.
But tonight, I’m going to let Friday cry.
Because frankly —
I’ve had quite enough of this day myself.
That’s all for now, from way atop God’s Mountain.
