I cannot be sure (these days the years blend and blur), but I was about seven. Spring had ornamented our neighborhood. It was exhilarating to see it, feel it, smell it: robins, sunbeams, lilacs. I was standing in my front yard with a junior-sized baseball bat and a golf ball. I tossed the ball up and swung at it, but not too hard (a week earlier my friend Tim had broken a neighbor's birdbath doing what I was doing).
Time and again, I missed the ball--swinging too high, too low. I decided to make one last try, and, in frustration, swung hard. C-r-a-c-k went the bat against the ball, and three seconds later, c-r-a-c-k went the ball against the windshield of mean Mr. Durrant's brand-new Hudson (a Cadillac-class car in its day). Long, ugly, spider-like lines radiated from the ball's impact point on the glass.
I was terrified. Mr. Durrant would surely kill me. I ran into the house, threw the bat under my bed, and, out of sheer nervousness, began to straighten my room. Had my Mother witnessed that unprecedented act, she would have known something was wretchedly awry, but she had gone shopping and Dad was at work.
After ten minutes, I conjured the courage to peek out the window. Mr. Durrant was standing in front of his car grilling a group of about eight neighborhood kids. He was red in the face and shaking a fist. I kept expecting one of the kids to point at my house, but that didn't happen. Apparently, no one had seen me--or had they? Guilt-gripped days passed. The sight of a police car paralyzed me with fear, as did the ringing of the doorbell and telephone.
After several uneventful weeks had passed, I decided I had gotten away with it. I was "home free."
But, of course, I wasn't. The fear faded, but the guilt lingered--guilt driven not only by what I had done, but by my failure to own up to it, to "face the music," as my Mother would say. That shattered glass had shattered my self-esteem.
Years later I realized that my line drive was an opportunity to take the first stuttering steps toward personal responsibility for more than minor mistakes . . . for mistakes that directly impacted others. I failed to take those steps on that fateful day, but in failing, I learned and I grew and I began to find myself.
When lilacs bloom, I remind myself to thank Mr. Durrant--on a day not distant--for parking his car where he did.
This is one of thirty-three stories in Paul H. Schneiter's 2013 book Rise, With Healing In Our Wings. The book includes twenty of his poems. It is available on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble web sites. It can also be ordered at selected book stores.