Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 17, 1994 TAG: 9410180033
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I was mowing in one of the sites where woods meet grass and not watching the ground too closely. Perhaps it was an especially pretty day and I was gazing at the sky instead. Perhaps I was making up some story in my head, or arguing more brilliantly an argument I'd lost the day before.
Whatever, suddenly there was the turtle before me. Nestled in the grass. And too close for me to stop.
I pulled the lever to raise the mower's blades as quickly as I could; I stomped the brakes. But mower toiled on and on before it finahe creature, I'd left it to suffer. Euthanasia is easily reckoned the merciful choice when the dying is a dumb creature. What had I done?
But it was a tiny regret, after all. A minute, single-line item in the long and ever-lengthening list of all those things I'd done that I ought not to have done, and all those things I'd left undone that I ought to have done.
The first weekend of this month, my family came for a picnic to celebrate my father's birthday. The children, of course, wanted to walk in the woods. So did I. So did everyone else. So, off we set: three generations with in-laws, we grown-ups taking turns hollering, "Don't you kids get too far ahead!" The youngest boy, who'd insisted on wearing his cowboy boots and his Superman suit, ended up riding on his father's shoulders.
Suddenly, the boys up ahead started shouting, "Hey! Hey, hey!" And one of them came running back toward us, carrying a box turtle.
"Look! Look!" The thrill of discovery shone from his face.
We all crouched down to look at his turtle. You'd have thought we'd none of us ever seen a box turtle before.
Little Superman had to get down to look, too. But of course, by then, the turtle had made good on his name: He'd closed up his box. Tight.
So we stared a while at the box. "Look at that, boys," I said, not thinking. "There's a scar on this turtle's shell."
Unimpressed, they scampered off. They wanted to see the head and feet again, the lively eyes. But no such luck. Little Superman and his daddy waited awhile to see if the box would reopen, but the rest of us ambled away.
And then, the connection fired in my brain. A scar on that turtle's shell! Could it be?
I called a herpetologist I know. I asked her how long box turtles live.
"Maybe 80 years," she said. "Certainly more than 40."
And could it be ... ?
"It could," she said.
If I were asked to describe my understanding of grace, this is the story I'd tell. Mysteriously, and through no action of mine, one tiny line item disappears. And not only that. It never was.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB