Small Story Sunday

There are very few places today where you can sing as loud as you want.

My sister and I were brushing shoulders as we reached to fill our plastic containers with strawberries from the neighbor's garden. I was surprised to find so many ready, red, ripe. June this year brought with it a lot of rain and very little sun; "A low season, a real pain in the ass.." The Farmers trail off as they walk through wet fields, gathering moldering hay into piles with rakes and tractors. They lean down with matches and gasoline, watching as their march, april, and may turns its atoms into ash. One thousand dollars in ten minutes.
But nothing can lesson the sweet of the first strawberry of summer, and my sister and I are almost dancing with our hands, happy to be outside in cut off jeans and flowers in our hair (weeds from the ditches but we don't care, they are orange, blue!) - we lift leaves to reveal each fruit, a tiny world caught up there, and in each seed another tiny world. Each seed must lead potentially to another, and I am almost dizzy for a moment with the weight of it all. Picking one, I hold it in my hand and for a moment, I hold one thousand worlds. --And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.

Tomorrow I lose my wisdom, teeth. I think I sentimentally attach to things and dates and places. (Don't we all? Maybe I am being selfish with that analysis..) Anyways, they have spent so much time with me; hiding snug along my jaw line somewhere, waiting to make their move all these years. For some reason I think that I will be different tomorrow, after the surgery. I really do. I'm clinging onto my last remaining physicality of childhood. No more ducking around the question of adulthood. As of tomorrow its a Statement. A downright Assertion. My friend Michael, who is currently 100 miles from the Oregon-Idaho border, assures me that I am being overly sentimental. He assures me of a lot of things actually, whether or not he is aware of it. Primarily, that it is possible to live a life like the ones we read about in english class. (He walked to his current location from Canby, by the way, and he plans to continue on until he reaches Nebraska.) I guess the lives we all read about in English class all have one thing in common: A climactic point where the protagonist addresses a challenge or solves a question.
Tomorrow this protagonist does one of these things, or both.
To dentistry, friends.
Cheers.