Child At Heart Read online

When Angels Speak

  “I’m sorry, Don, but that professor talked way too long, and now I’m gonna be late picking my kid up. Can’t this jalopy go any faster?” Rhonda stared wistfully out the passenger window of my gray Civic, as though she were addressing someone outside the car. An anxious finger was twirled around a wisp of her blonde hair.

  “Relax, pretty lady, or you’ll end up looking like this long before your time.” I pointed to my face. Sixteen years my junior, Rhonda’s smooth skin and vibrant hair were a sharp contrast to my graying goatee and furrowed complexion.

  Disarmed, she smiled. “Some first date this is turning out to be, huh?”

  After several attempts at dinner-dates that for one reason or another she could not commit to, Rhonda accompanied me to a university lecture entitled Children, Angels and God, where a theologian colleague of mine suggested we recapture our angelic child within by breaking free from, as he put it, the dungeon that is life in the grown-up world, and thereby move closer to God. But his well-intentioned plea dragged on longer than Rhonda had anticipated and she began to fidget nervously in her seat.

  “Can we go? I don’t like to keep Teddy waiting,” she eventually whispered, handing me my navy blue beret.

  Rhonda is a single mom who is deeply devoted to her two little boys—a trait that I, a man who has never had kids, admire greatly. I can only imagine how many sacrifices that carrying two jobs required for her boys to be deprived of nothing. So, as much as the selfish academic in me would have preferred to stick around for the remainder of the lecture, his gentlemanly counterpart respected Rhonda far too much to let him.

  With a grin, I extended my hand for my beret. “Oh well, a cardinal rule of Canadian culture is that hockey always trumps academia. Let’s go pick Teddy up,” I said, nudging my head toward the exit. Her smile beamed with affection for her boys and I instinctively wrapped my arm around her shoulder. I couldn’t wait to meet her kids.

  At the arena, the moment we were within view of the bleachers, several parents called out to her.

  “There she is.”

  “The star’s mom.”

  “He’s playing another great game, hon’.”

  I had not yet met either of her sons, but she certainly had made me aware of their athletic prowess. I was overcome with a strange combination of pride and affection at being the man escorting this lovely young woman who happened to be the mother of what I was increasingly realizing were two exceptional boys. We had barely taken our seats among the other parents when a cheer erupted.

  Rhonda yelped. “That’s him, that’s my seven year old—the one with the long hair sticking out of the helmet. He just scored.”

  The nearly two periods of hockey that I watched Teddy play that evening certainly validated his reputation as the dominant player in the league. At the end of the game, the coach asked Rhonda for permission to elevate him to a league with older boys where he would benefit from the higher caliber of competition.

  After high-fiving his team-mates goodbye, Teddy sauntered nonchalantly toward us, dragging his gear behind him. Rhonda introduced me as a friend.

  With thumbs hooked onto the front pockets of my brown corduroys, I half-crouched. “Hi, buddy,” I said, referring to him the way his mother did. “Great game.”

  Teddy’s kinky, shoulder-length hair had a blondish tint, his mother’s contribution to the union, as were the green eyes. He ignored me.

  Rhonda raised Teddy’s chin. “You know Antoinette across the street?”

  He nodded.

  “Don is her cousin.”

  He shrugged. “Is daddy coming?”

  “No, not today.” She handed him a small packet of orange juice with a pint-sized straw attached to it. “Here you go, buddy.”

  I leaned towards her and half-mumbled so the boy couldn’t hear. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to be here?”

  Rhonda returned an impatient shrug. “I can’t tell you how you’re supposed to feel.”

  “Oh.” I slid my hands into my pockets and looked away.

  Teddy, meanwhile, had downed the drink in practically one gulp.

  “You must’ve been really thirsty, eh buddy?” I said.

  “Can we phone daddy?” he asked, ignoring the stranger making irrelevant remarks.

  “Of course we can—as soon as your brother and grandma get back. Do you think we’ll beat them home?”

  “Yup!”

  “Then let’s go.”

  In the parking lot, Teddy looked around for their car.

  “Don’s driving us home,” Rhonda told him.

  I folded down the front passenger’s back-rest, guided him into the rear seat and reached for the seatbelt.

  “No.” He snatched the belt from my hand and buckled himself behind his mom.

  “Atta-boy; you’re a big guy,” I said as Rhonda pulled her door shut.

  On the drive home, mother and son caught up on the day’s events, Rhonda glancing over her shoulder, occasionally jerking her head back to flick her hair out of the way. Gradually, as I eased into their conversation, he started to nod or shake his head in response to my queries. But he didn’t speak to me.

  Inside their hallway, while removing my brown leather windbreaker, I noticed two photos of the boys in their hockey gear, both performing a two-legged stop, with the traditional shower of ice chips raining upwards past their knees.

  “Wow! Great pictures! You guys look like pros.”

  He nodded.

  “You won’t believe how expensive children’s hockey equipment is these days,” Rhonda said as she began to set the table. She had removed her sweater and I noticed the freckles on her arms. I wondered if Teddy shared that trait too. Meanwhile, he ran from the room.

  A moment later his arms were overflowing with trophies.

  “Wow! Are all those yours?”

  He replied with his usual nod.

  “Tell him the truth,” his mother said, pinching his backside. “Some are your brother’s.”

  “Boy, you guys are some athletes. I wish I had trophies like these.”

  “Look.” He pointed to the date on one of them.

  “2013 Champs. You just won this. Way to go!”

  He nodded and pointed simultaneously to another trophy; and to another; and another after that.

  “Holy mackerel! 2012, 2011, the works! You guys are really good.”

  “Come.” He grabbed my shirtsleeve and tugged me into the living room.

  “I won these,” he said, his first full sentence to me, probably prompted by the excitement of showing off a hutch full of medals of various sizes and colors.

  “Wow!” I repeated for the umpteenth time. “Maybe one day we can play shinny. I still skate, you know.”

  His eyes grew wide, more disbelief than awe. “You play hockey?”

  “Well, like a geezer. See my gray hair?” I pointed to my scalp then poked a playful finger into his arm.

  He responded with a poke of his own, into my stomach—which long ago had begun to bulge over my belt—and finally broke into a smile. “You’re old.” A moment later, quite unexpectedly, he extended his hand. “Shake.”

  I can hardly describe how I felt at that moment. The ice was broken and my grin was every bit as jubilant as his. At the same time, a lump formed in my throat and my eyes moistened. There was something about this child that tapped into me; and it seemed there was something about me that he needed as well. I wished I could shake the feeling of not belonging.

  His brother and grandmother arrived home a few minutes later and the atmosphere changed immediately. The powerful bond between the four members of this family was instantly on display and I had to pause and fully take the moment in. To my surprise, my throat tightened again and I understood why I felt so peripheral. Antoinette had said theirs was a broken home, but I saw nothing broken in the love that knit three generations of this household so tightly that my own kin would never understand.

  The brothers chased each other around the kitc
hen for a few minutes, no doubt making up for the time they had spent apart, grabbing a cookie here and a muffin there.

  “Here, have some milk with that,” chided their grandmother, handing them each a glass.

  Finally, both boys stood in front of me. “He’s my brother,” Teddy said. “His name’s Zacky.”

  “We call him Wacky,” his grandmother said, removing her cap to reveal hair as thick as her daughter’s, although with streaks of gray. “Why, this kid could sell snow to an Eskimo.”

  Gently, I raised his chin. “Hey there, little guy; your brother showed me your hockey prizes.”

  He selectively scooped some of the trophies and hugged them tightly. “These are mine.” Unlike his older brother, he bore an independence that I couldn’t quite grasp in one so young.

  Standing together, the boys appeared almost identical, except for the difference in size—Zacky was a year and a half younger. Like his brother, he too had a hint of yellow in his equally long hair, but his eyes were brown. Both boys were light-skinned, but Zacky had his mother’s thin nose, which softened the African component in his features.

  “Wow! Both you boys are amazing. I’m so pleased to know you. But what about school? How are you guys doing in school?”

  “Good,” they said in unison.

  “They’re ‘A’ students,” Rhonda hollered from the sink, not without a hint of pride.

  “Good for you. You guys are really something. I’m so impressed.”

  Rhonda placed some burgers on the grill and sent me to the corner store for pop.

  “Can I go? Can I go?” both boys said.

  “That’s up to Don,” she replied, casting a sideways glance my way.

  “Well, they’re my two little buds, so I can’t possibly go without them.”

  “Okay, but you boys hold onto Don’s hand.”

  “I’m not gonna hold his hand like a girl,” Teddy said.

  “Then stay with him. No running, okay?”

  In the store, each boy grabbed an item from the candy shelf. “Can I take this please, huh, can I?” they took turns saying. Whether it was affection for their mother, or perhaps latent fatherly feelings that had been lying dormant for 30 years, I really cannot say; but those two little boys had found an express route deep into my emotions and there was no way I could refuse them.

  After dinner, they ate a chunk of their candy and then did a quick exchange. Almost immediately Zacky spat out his brother’s candy.

  He pushed a piece towards me. “Try it.”

  “Thanks, little guy, but I stopped eating sweets a long time ago. I’m a geezer, remember?”

  Rhonda snickered. “Yes, he’s the old fool there’s no fool like.”

  I smiled at mother and daughter looking on, seemingly pleased at the bond their boys had developed with me.

  “Just try it.” Zacky pushed it closer to me.

  “I’m fine, Zacky, I promise.”

  “Just one bite,” he insisted. “It tastes funny.”

  “Well if it tastes funny we’ll throw it out.”

  “I want you to try it—just one bite.”

  I had never met a five-year-old so assertive and insistent. Seeing no way out of it, I glanced at his womenfolk and shrugged. “Oh well, I guess I’ve just been sold a chunk of candy.”

  Everyone laughed except Zacky.

  I found it odd that I could not chew the candy; and, true to Zacky’s assessment, it tasted funny. After several unsuccessful attempts to chew it, I gave up, spat it into a napkin and rinsed my mouth with pop.

  Zacky kicked my leg under the table. “See, I told you.” Then he pointed to his brother. “He swallowed it.”

  Instantly I understood what the child had been getting at, and I felt nauseous for Teddy. We studied the wrapper frantically but found no English. Eventually we deciphered that it was not to be eaten. It wasn’t candy at all!

  A look of panic seized Teddy and he let out a shriek, part fear and, it seemed, part anger. In that instant, every second of the friendship that had blossomed so quickly flashed before me, and the frightened look on his seven-year-old face was just wrenching my gut. He looked so unlike the confident hockey player I had seen at the rink that it was all I could do to keep from dropping next to him and hugging him tightly.

  “It’s okay big guy, we’re gonna look after you, I promise.” I reached for his hand. He pulled it away and clung to his mother, on the phone with the paramedics, reading the label’s contents.

  “You hear that, buddy? You’ll be fine,” she reassured him. “There’s nothing weird on the label.”

  “Yeah, you’ll just poop it out tomorrow morning,” I said, trying to make him laugh.

  “That’s right,” his grandmother, who had been sitting stoically the whole time, said.

  The paramedics confirmed that the wrongfully packaged substance contained nothing poisonous and it would journey harmlessly through the child’s system. Relieved, I wrapped my arm around his shoulder and sang a verse from James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James, substituting his name instead.

  With all the attention we were giving his brother, I suddenly realized that our five-year-old hero was lingering quietly next to us like a little adult, not at all feeling ignored. Not once had he interrupted his mother while she tended to Teddy. I reached over to caress his cheek, that sage grin still on his face.

  “You did something very special for your big brother today, you know.”

  Those beautiful, twinkling, innocent eyes of his accepted the praise with a maturity that overwhelmed me. The theologian’s prophetic words came back to me and my throat tightened again.

  I slumped onto the couch and, a moment later, both boys slithered next to me, one on each side. A pride I did not feel entitled to surged suddenly through me. Minutes later, laughing and cajoling, we made up a verse:

  We munched on some candy today

  Then found out it wasn’t okay

  So the two boys and me

  Sat by the TV

  And tomorrow we’ll poop it away.

  Eventually, with Zack cradled in my left arm and Teddy in my right, they fell asleep on my chest, their long hair draping their angelic faces. I squeezed them a little tighter to me and reflected on the magic that had entered my life the moment I walked into theirs. Fifty-two years had not produced the amount of living that those two little guys gave me in a few short hours.

  I figured I became an angel that evening, for in those precious little boys I glimpsed the Face of God.