This blog is written by one of my authors and writing students, Carolyn Hart. (A wonderful teacher, an excellent writer and human)

 

I live in the country now, a grown woman driving to work as another year of teaching comes to an end, past farmers’ fields, the hay spilling over in long waves as golden as sunlight, as sweet as the memories of warm weekends ripe with possibility and childhood friends. 

 

It is Saturday morning and I am at my best friend’s house. Karen is the kind of friend who makes no demands and loves to do almost anything. She is one year younger than me but it does not matter because we are 10 and 11 and the world sits in front of us, magical and wide, waiting to be explored.

 

We have eaten sugary cereal while doing puzzles on the back of the box, the milk turning chocolatey as we swirl our spoons, and are now sitting on the back porch petting Blacky, her dog with a hole in his heart. It is June, and warm, and we are sucking the syrup out of the salvia flowers from her mother’s garden. Life is perfect. 

 

– What do you want to do – I ask. 

 

– We should go see how tall the hay is – Karen says. 

 

This is a solid plan, one with many promises of adventure – mice, mapping secret routes through the hayfield, lying on our backs with the warm sun making Karen’s freckles multiply and my skin turn dark like a burnt hotdog, as long as her annoying older brother doesn’t find us. 

 

The field is across the road, acres of property owned by the nuns. Karen’s father tends it, giving us access to scraped knees and dirt-filled fingernails that are kept short so that we are unencumbered. We are ready for the day, to do things that our mothers don’t need to know we are doing but that are not so dangerous that we need to hide them. Yet.  But we do. Not because we have to, but because we can. 

 

We glance up at the kitchen window, just to the right of the porch, to see Karen’s mother doing the dishes. It is time. 

 

Without a word, I look at Karen, and nod. Blacky stays, because she has to. We slip underneath the window, run hard down the driveway, and look both ways before crossing the road – we are not stupid – there is a curve that bears minding. 

 

We are not supposed to really go into the hayfield, but I have often seen Karen’s mother watching us from the picture window in the living room, drying her hands on the apron around her waist. 

 

The field is high with the first harvest, and we are just not that tall. As usual, we count 1-2-3 together and step into the yellow-beige field of nothingness, of everyness, of secrets that we don’t even know yet. Karen disappears, and I reach to my left, feeling for her hand, giggling as we connect but are still hidden. Her hand is soft and familiar.

 

We both move forward, crushing wheat fronds to create pathways, and then Karen appears, crossing my path. I shriek, she runs, and I chase her through the field, our path wild and aimless as we head deeper. She trips on a large stalk, falling forward and then flipping on her back at the last moment, laughing and out of breath. I stand over her, wanting more of something that I don’t know yet. Hands on hips, I let go a scream that could flatten the rest of the field, but doesn’t, and then flop down beside her, arms outstretched. We lie, panting, the backs of our legs itching from the hay, the sweat settling behind the small of our backs. 

 

The sun is high, warming our already warm bodies. My legs are tingling from the exertion, the sweat, the hay. Karen rolls on her side, pulls a strand of stalk-fluff from my hair, laughing as she waggles it in front of my face until I almost sneeze. I yank it away from her and place it in my mouth, pretending, hoping, that I might look cool, like boys on television. 

 

We hear a sound, close-by and possibly menacing – loud clomping, large swishes at the hay, a sense of something big, something unknown. I roll on my stomach, signal to Karen with a finger on my lips that we should lie very still. We wait. Maybe it is the man who does maintenance. Maybe it is her brother, trying to scare us. Maybe it is a large animal, sniffing us, ready to attack. We wait. The seconds go by, then minutes, and nothing happens, the sound shifting away. We have escaped. We are safe. 

 

We run home for peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches. 

 

Sometimes I hear about Karen from my mother. She’s all grown up now, with a son, a job, a house. I wonder, occasionally, what it would be like to reach across time, run through the fields again, lie on my back on the soft ground, have the sweet bite of a warm sandwich on white bread melting again on my tongue. I turn on the highway, continue my day. 

Carolyn Hart ( writer, teacher, mom, human)

 

 

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