The Hill

She stood at the top of the hill.  It was a sheet of ice, a scary undertaking for any young girl, but she was a little different, she was afraid of everything.  Maybe she was in the third or fourth grade.  Hungry from no breakfast going home for lunch.  She probably had a hard morning at school, she was teased a lot.  Kids can be cruel.  She had lost her brother, her father and her mother in a way.  All in one full swoop, in the middle of a six month period.

So she stood at the top of that icy hill and she cried.  She couldn’t make herself walk down the hill.  I guess perhaps she was afraid she would fall or she would get hurt or she would die too.  She just stood there and cried until finally her neighbor came along and gently took her hand and walked her down the two tremendous icy hills to her home.  Step by step.  By the time she reached home she did not have time for lunch and had to walk back up the icy hills because she could not stay home she had been in school in the morning.

She went back up to school finished the day.  Walked baby step by baby step down the hill until she got home the second time and forgot about the abject fear of standing on the top of a hill too afraid to walk down it.  She picked up her smile in between her tears and she moved on, never to realize the bravery of a young girl who lost so much but managed to smile and overcome a fear if only for a day.

The memory of that day along with many others buried beneath the many stitches of life which sustained her and made it easier to not remember.