A friend told me about her little boy who was toting a book around the house. It was a chapter book, none too thin considering his age. She knew it was an adventure story, with swashbuckling bad guys and more than enough peril. She had seen him with a flashlight under the covers after bedtime, but closed the door quietly leaving him to his heroes.
Yet on this sunny morning he was smiling. The book marker revealed that he was barely two thirds of the way through, the scariest part if memory served. He started to laugh.
"What is so funny? I thought that was a book about danger?" she asked.
"Last night I sneaked to the end. Everything turns out great!!" He was laughing. She watched him trot into the living room and plop on the couch. He opened to the book marker and soon was absorbed in the pages.
Sometimes life feels like that middle part. The uncertainties peel off the news faster than I can read them, as do the updates from various schools and jobs about what the fall will bring.
The other evening I sat quietly at dusk on my porch, the fireflies blinking their secret messages to each other. I imagined that they were really angels, out past their bedtime, and shining their light on my household. Rumor has it such beings know how the story ends.
Then as I rose to go inside I heard a tinkling sound behind me in the yard, almost like laughing.
