Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Fire-fighter (10/05/06)
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TITLE: The words every mother wishes to hear. | Previous Challenge Entry
By Susan Lower
10/12/06 -
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“A what?” Her brows furrowed together and her lips hung parted.
“Pyromaniac.” His eyes lit up and danced a jig in the flickering light of the kitchen bulb going dim. “You know those people who start fires.”
“Maniac.” She looked at her blossoming seven year old and wondered what she had done. She heard about the gangs at school, the violence on the news, the losses people suffered when their homes lay in ashes on the ground—and she prayed each night for all of them. Somewhere she must have forgotten her family in those prayers, or maybe she assumed God was watching over them since their lives were constantly entwined at his fingertips.
“Earth to Mom!” Her fair-haired, freckled, squinting son waved his hand in front of her face. He crossed his arms and waited for her feet to come back down on the marble tiles. “You okay?” He asked her as if she were suddenly forming strange spots on her forehead. She was certainly seeing them; she needed to find a seat before she collapsed.
“Fires?” she stammered. “You want to start fires?”
“Yeah!” His eyes were ablaze. The excitement in his voice scorched her. “You’re always saying how you got to light a match under the seat of our pants to get us motivated.” He pounded his chest with a fist. “I want to be your matches.”
The sincerity he displayed caused her face to scrunch up in restricted humor. A box of matches indeed, she thought. Her middle child, a hot head at times, wanting to be the very thing she refuses to strike. What a precious gift this was, and yet she would fight him. Fires were destructive; they harmed people, consumed the materials of the earth, and brought devastation where they ignited. No, she wouldn’t let her son become one of those people locked away from misguidance.
“Have you told your father this?” She asked.
“He thought it was great!”
“I’m sure he did.” She said under her breath. How on earth was she going to handle this one? Little Janie losing her doll’s arm this morning had made the day horrific already, now she was about to step on the cinders of her son’s ideas. Sometimes being a mom just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She sighed.
“I’m going over to David’s house. I thought I could practice starting my first fire there.”
“NO! Wait!” She stood on her feet in a flash and grabbed him by the shoulders. “You can’t go around starting fires!” For a moment she saw him dressed in orange, or worse, black and white stripes from old movie prisoners.
“Why not?” He frowned. “Dad said I could.”
When would boys ever learn to grow up into men? She shook her head. “Jason.” She looked him in the eye. “Do you know what the job of a fire fighter is?” She waited. He nodded. “They put out fires. I don’t know what your dad told you, but being a pyromaniac is a bad thing. Fires can burn you, they harm people, and I don’t think you want to hurt anyone, do you?” The expression in his eyes almost made her cry.
“I’m not gonna hurt no one. I’m not really going to start a REAL fire. I just thought it would be cool to go around make everybody all hot over Jesus. You know like superman saving the world, or Pastor Roland on Sunday. Dad said people who start fires are pyromaniac so I wanted to be one. I want start fires that will burn inside of people where nobody can put them out.”
She shook her head and gathered him close. She ignored the fact her gangly son stood stiff in her arms. He was seven after all—too macho for a hug from her, but what he just said was more grown-up than most folks around. One of her children was listening to her after all. The only fire fighter that could stand in her son’s way was the sins of man, and for that she would let him set upon them a fierce blaze.
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