“Let me ride on your shoulders, Papa,” Nora said.
Nora, 4, was over for a Friday-night pizza party and now it was time to go home.
“Home” was close. Home was down the street.
Home was half a pomegranate, 10 houses and a foot race between the Chinese elms away.
“Close” is good but if you are not close, and have to travel to the moon and back to see family, you’ll don the suit, light the fuse and pour yourself a shot of Tang.
“I’m not sure I can, Nora.”
That wasn’t the right answer. Not the answer she was looking for. Not the answer I wanted to give.
“Papa can’t take you anymore,” said Nora’s grandmother. “You’ve gotten too big.”
Not “big” as in heavy, but big as in solid. The sort of solid that gives a man pause when he considers picking something up, hoisting it on his shoulders and walking down the street as if he was competing in a strongman event.
“I’m a big girl,” she often corrects me when I forget and call her my baby girl.
Big now. Big then. Big until she wants to ride on my shoulders and suddenly wants to be little again.
Shoulder top is a great perch. You can see the world, look down on its inhabitants and be closer to the trees, sun and stars. You can pretend you’re riding your own personal horse and if it's necessary to remove his hat so he’ll giddyup, you can do that, too.
Then one day, you pick her up and realize that 45 pounds has become dead weight and maybe it’s time to get out of the horse business.
There is a time to pass the torch. Pass the riding-on-the shoulders torch to sons and daughters. Parents who are 30 years younger and presumably 30 years stronger.
Nora looked at me as if to say, “You’re going to quit on me?”
I looked back as if to say, “I want to quit, I have every intention of quitting but when I look at your face, I don’t want to be the person who disappoints you, I’d rather leave that to your parents, friends and life in general."
Did I have one more ride in me? They lived close. Ten houses. If the Little Engine That Could did, then I could, too. Either that or wrench my back, tear out all remaining cartilage and dump her into the forsythia.
I walked up a couple of stairs and Nora climbed a few more above me and stepped on my shoulders. I stood up, grabbed the rail and we were off down the sidewalk, swaying at first like a Jeffrey pine in a Sierra wind.
We made it. I could have gone on forever, or at least 10 more feet. Nora was happy. The big girl, the little girl, the girl who was close to the sun, stars and trees.
In the story “Gorm, The Giant of Club,” Gorm, who is in the same league as Paul Bunyan sizewise, is looking to serve the king of everything there is. He is told that if waits by the river, one day the king of kings will pass through.
Gorm waits for years and while he does helps travelers ford the river no matter how dangerous it is. One icy cold winter night, a child comes to the river’s edge and asks Gorm, now old and bereft of his great strength, if he will help him cross.
Gorm, after a lifetime of service, cannot say no and he picks up the child, who seems to weigh a thousand pounds, and they cross the river after almost being swept away several times.
On the other side, the child becomes a tall man with a crown and a light around his head. Gorm, realizing he has found the king of kings, tells him that all his life he has hungered to enter his service but now his strength is gone and he has nothing left to give.
“On the day you took our stand by this ford to wait for my coming and to help those who had need of your great strength you did enter my service,” the king says.
“Whenever you carried the old, the sick, the helpless, the poor, the little ones, you carried me.
“I have been watching you, I have been loving you, I have been preparing my blessings for you.”
If Gorm can do it, so could I, at least one more time. This is the service we promise our children, grandchildren and friends. It is worth the wait.
November 22, 2020 at 03:15PM
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HERB BENHAM: Honored to still be of service - The Bakersfield Californian
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Herb
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