How to Quiet an Aching Heart

Do what it tells you to do.

The story I was working on this week is called “My Funny Valentine.” It’s all tangled up and requires a little more time to straighten out. Since it’s been snowing, I thought the following might be a nice bookmark until then….

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It snowed again over the weekend, all of three inches, more than it has in years. Nice to see but not enough to sculpt either a decent figure or snow angel. The next day turned warmer and the snow melted some. Then night came, the temperature dropped, and the top mush froze into a hard crust: perfect sledding conditions.

The best way to untangle your thoughts and gather them into something close to cohesion is to take a walk. I headed to the nearby park. It’s cement walks bend around two hills. One is a gentle rolling lawn, graced with groves of mature trees. The other is a steep mound topped with a flagpole. I stopped to watch two small children, guided by their mother, soar down the mound, skid across the walk and bounce across the lawn. Their mother caught up with them just before they tumbled to a stop before a massive tree.

I realized a few years ago that my heart would break if I never sled again. It may not be true but when I was growing up there was always snow. It arrived in November and stayed until at least early March. Golf courses make the best sled runs with obstacles such as precarious hills, sand depressions, and trees within the roughs. There was a large public course near my family’s house. Hole 10 and 12 consisted of two long hills. In winter they were christened angel hill and devil hill. Angel hill, of course, was considered suitable only for babies and the parents who held them tight in their sleds. It was a long easy run with enough gentle bumps for mild thrills. Devil hill was famous for broken bones. It was steep and the narrow creek across the bottom required either a cowardly roll off the sled or a precise aim over a narrow wooden bridge. To make it more interesting, every year some knuckleheads would drag over a stolen car hood and plant it about half way down the hill for a ski jump: skid off that at warp speed and bodies crumpled on a regular basis.

These are the hills where my heart would break if I didn’t careen down them once more. Forget the series of fractures, torn ligaments and muscles, klutzy propensity for making wrong turns, the closing-in expiration date on the entire human structure. My heart longed for another run.

And, so, on a snowy visit to my family, after a long dinner, several bottles of wine, and glasses of a medicinal digestif, I insisted I wanted to go sledding. My brother might have thought he was calling my bluff when he asked his son if their sled was still operational. It was. I stood up and put on my coat, expecting my brave brother to come with me. He demurred. My sister joined me at the door. My niece, nephew, and his girlfriend would drive us to the golf course.

In a nod to the years since the last time we stole into the golf course, we made our way to angel hill. The children watched their aunts fold their bones down into the flimy plastic sled, my sister in front, me in the back. We pushed off and our hoots echoed behind us as soon as we pushed downward. None of the children were eager to take a turn so my sister and I once more sped our way into the night.

Climbing up the hill again, my sister said, “we just gave them something to tell everyone at our funerals.”

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