job

We lived on the banks of the Tennessee River, and we owned the summers when we were girls. We ran wild through humid summer days that never ended but only melted one into the other. We floated down rivers of weekdays with no school, no rules , no parents, and no constructs other than our fantasies. We were good girls, my sister and I. We had nothing to rebel against. This was just life as we knew it, and we knew the summers to be long and to be ours.

The road that ran past our house was a one-lane rural route. Every morning, after our parents had gone to work, I'd wait for the mail lady to pull up to our box. Some days I would put enough change for a few stamps into a mason jar lid and leave it in the mailbox. I hated bothering mail lady with this transaction, which made her job take longer. But I liked that she knew that someone in our house sent letters into the outside world.

I liked walking to the mailbox in my bare feet and leaving footprints on the dewy grass. I imagined that feeling the wetness on the bottom of my feet made me a poet. I had never read poetry, outside of some Emily Dickinson. But I imagined that people who knew of such things would walk to their mailboxes through the morning dew in their bare feet.

We planned our weddings with the help of Barbie dolls and the tiny purple wild flowers growing in our side yard. We became scientists and tested concoctions of milk, orange juice, and mouthwash. We ate handfuls of bittersweet chocolate chips and licked peanut butter off spoons. When we ran out of sweets to eat, we snitched sugary Flintstones vitamins out of the medicine cabinet. We became masters of the Kraft macaroni and cheese lunch, and we dutifully called our mother at work three times a day to give her updates on our adventures. But don't call too often or speak too loudly or whine too much, we told ourselves, or else they'll get annoyed and she'll get fired and the summers will end.

We shaped our days the way we chose, far from the prying eyes of adults. We found our dad's Playboys and charged the neighborhood boys money to look at them. We made crank calls around the county, telling people they had won a new car. "What kind?" they'd ask. "Red," we'd always say. We put on our mom's old prom dresses, complete with gloves and hats, and sang backup to the C.W. McCall song convoy, " which we'd found on our dad's turntable.

We went on hikes into the woods behind our house, crawling under barbed wire fences and through tangled undergrowth. Heat and humidity found their way throught he leaves to our flushed faces. We waded in streams that we were always surprised to come across. We walked past cars and auto parts that had been abandoned in the woods, far from any road. We'd reach the tree line and come out unexpectedly into a cow pasture. We''d perch on the gate or stretch out on the large flat limes tone outcrop that marked the end of the Woods Behind Our House.

One day a thunderstorm blew up along the Tennessee River. It was one of those storms that make the day go dark and the humidity disappear. First it was still and quiet. There was electricity in the air and then the sharp crispness of a summer day being blown wide open as the winds rushed in. We threw open all the doors and windows. We found the classical radio station from two towns away and turned up the bass and cranked up the speakers. We let the wind blow in and churn our summer day around. We let the music we were only vaguely familiar with roar through the house. And we twirled. We twirled in the living room in the wind and in the music. We twirled and we imagined that we were poets and dancers and scientists and spring brides.

We twirled and imagined that if we could let everything --- the thunder, the storm, the wind , the world --- into that house in the banks of the Tennessee River, we could live in our summer dreams forever. When we were girls.

A young man, a student in one of our universities, was one day taking a walk with a professor, who was commonly called the students' friend, for his kindness to those who waited on his instructions. As they went along, they saw lying in the path a pair of old shoes, which they supposed to belong to a poor man who was employed in a field close by, and who had nearly finished his day's work.

The student turned to the professor, saying: "Let us play the man a trick: we will hide his shoes, and conceal ourselves behind those bushes, and wait to see his perplexity when he cannot find them."

"My young friend," answered the professor, "we should never amuse ourselves at the expense of the poor. But you are rich, and may give yourself a much greater pleasure by means of the poor man. Put a coin into each shoe, and then we will hide ourselves and watch how the discovery affects him."

The student did so, and they both placed themselves behind the bushes close by. The poor man soon finished his work, and came across the field to the path where he had left his coat and shoes. While putting on his coat he slipped his foot into one of his shoes; but feeling something hard, he stooped down to feel what it was, and found the coin. Astonishment and wonder were seen upon his countenance. He gazed upon the coin, turned it round, and looked at it again and again. He then looked around him on all sides, but no person was to be seen. He now put the money into his pocket, and proceeded to put on the other shoe; but his surprise was doubled on finding the other coin. His feelings overcame him; he fell upon his knees, looked up to heaven and uttered aloud a fervent thanksgiving, in which he spoke of his wife, sick and helpless, and his children without bread, whom the timely bounty, from some unknown hand, would save from perishing.

The student stood there deeply affected, and his eyes filled with tears. "Now," said the professor, "are you not much better pleased than if you had played your intended trick?"

The youth replied, "You have taught me a lesson which I will never forget. I feel now the truth of those words, which I never understood before: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"

A young man, a student in one of our universities, was one day taking a walk with a professor, who was commonly called the students' friend, for his kindness to those who waited on his instructions. As they went along, they saw lying in the path a pair of old shoes, which they supposed to belong to a poor man who was employed in a field close by, and who had nearly finished his day's work.

The student turned to the professor, saying: "Let us play the man a trick: we will hide his shoes, and conceal ourselves behind those bushes, and wait to see his perplexity when he cannot find them."

"My young friend," answered the professor, "we should never amuse ourselves at the expense of the poor. But you are rich, and may give yourself a much greater pleasure by means of the poor man. Put a coin into each shoe, and then we will hide ourselves and watch how the discovery affects him."

The student did so, and they both placed themselves behind the bushes close by. The poor man soon finished his work, and came across the field to the path where he had left his coat and shoes. While putting on his coat he slipped his foot into one of his shoes; but feeling something hard, he stooped down to feel what it was, and found the coin. Astonishment and wonder were seen upon his countenance. He gazed upon the coin, turned it round, and looked at it again and again. He then looked around him on all sides, but no person was to be seen. He now put the money into his pocket, and proceeded to put on the other shoe; but his surprise was doubled on finding the other coin. His feelings overcame him; he fell upon his knees, looked up to heaven and uttered aloud a fervent thanksgiving, in which he spoke of his wife, sick and helpless, and his children without bread, whom the timely bounty, from some unknown hand, would save from perishing.

The student stood there deeply affected, and his eyes filled with tears. "Now," said the professor, "are you not much better pleased than if you had played your intended trick?"

The youth replied, "You have taught me a lesson which I will never forget. I feel now the truth of those words, which I never understood before: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"