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It was Labor Day, the first Monday in September. For the moment, the weather was cooperating, but the sky looked as if it could let loose with angel tears at any moment. That’s what my Quinton had always called summer rain showers. Not the rains that came as downpours, but the light showers that rainbows shown through. Almost like when you were a kid and you made rainbows with the watering hose.
It seemed that Quinton was on my mind more than usual lately. I wondered where he was and if he was making his own rainbows. He had been out of our lives with no word from him in 8 years now, leaving to make it on his own; he’d said. I also wondered if he had found his dream.
Quinton had been the oldest of our three children, always the little helper, hardly ever complaining about the need for his help. My other two children were girls; twin girls. I was already into my forties when they were born, Quinton was thirteen. My husband, Leroy, Quinton and the twin’s father, had left to go to Germany three weeks before Christmas 1943. He had never returned home…although the government had assured me that he had returned back to the United States. Neither his siblings nor any of his past acquaintances had heard from him. Quinton, the twins and I waited not knowing if we really wanted him to come back or not. We were doing okay without him. I worked at the local J&L Diner waiting tables. Quinton watched the twins as I took the 5am breakfast shift. I’d get home just in time for him to leave for school and then I’d return to work for the supper shift after he got home from school. Quinton took on the responsibility of “mothering” the twins without complaint. Once the twins were old enough to look after themselves, Quinton decided to quit school and get a full time job. He had “dreams” he said. That’s all he ever talked about, “his dreams”. He never once revealed the nature of his dreams to me, except for one; he wanted to be like a rainbow and make people smile. I think he felt that if he told us what his dreams really were, that they could never come true.
Now as I joined the twins for our annual Labor Day hotdog roast, with the sky getting ready to release Angel’s tears, my own tears dropped from my eyes as I prayed for my son. “Please God, if Quinton is with you in heaven; let his angel tears help make a rainbow.” As if my prayer was answered, the angel shower began…
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