storeeze

The sun drives the seasons and the days between Legion ball and football practice. I never had it so good: running with Richie and his brother Larry, collecting unemployment, sponging off the old man, more interested in getting laid than getting paid, traffic tickets, pecker tracks in the back seat, a police escort home, mom wringing her hands like Lady Macbeth, “Where did I go wrong?” On one of those dog day afternoons, I turned my Harley onto Diagonal Boulevard, a mile from home. A bubble machine lit up on a side street. Cops will chase anything. I grabbed a handful of throttle—my risk insurance had expired—no license! The roar and a siren alerted mom as I swung past the house, wind in my face, the fuzz on my ass. Both hands were on the bar. I let  loose for real, looped on 74th Street and flew past Marlys Pederson's, a fantasy I had until I saw Phoebe Crouch. At Portland, a busy thoroughfare, I said a prayer, pushed the speed up and blew across without looking. I opened my eyes ...

My first sense of a Higher Power walked in with death: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. —Child's bedtime prayer, 18th century Before my mother taught me the prayer, I had had no thoughts about death or God. Afterward, those were all my thoughts. The prayer, a childhood favorite then, established a supernatural realm and the agency to connect it with the material world. It reminded children of the impermanence of life and the certainty of death. It promoted the curious idea that the sovereignty of the prayer would comfort children before bedtime, and foster innocence in childhood slumber after its recitation. Can this be right? How could I go to sleep if I might not wake up? Terrifying. As we prayed together each night, she taught me to pray for others. Would they die, too? This sad bedtime poem generated more questions than answers. What is a soul? Where would the Lord take it? Why couldn’t ...