He bounced a few more times as he shook his body loose. I was not about to do all of that. I will confess: he did look good when he did it. With me, I didn’t think it would so much.
We began to walk, which was great since that’s what I’d come to the park to do.
“So . . . tell me about your family?” he said as he looked at me while maintaining a comfortable stride.
“I have three daughters.”
“Yeah. I remember them from that time I saw you in Rich’s some years back. So what are their names and how old are they now?”
“My oldest is Zanetta. She’s twenty-two, serving in the Air Force.”
“Wow, the Air Force!”
“Yes. She’s always been fascinated with planes, ever since she was a little girl. She’s always wanted to fly. So in spite of what her father and I argued against when she told us her intentions to enlist in the military, she was determined she was going to join the Air Force.”
“So are you okay now with her being in the Air Force? Wow . . . military. You know, she could have learned to fly through other means.”
“I know. But she was also interested in the money she’d earn for college by being in the military,” I said. “So I’m okay with what she’s doing. She’s living her life the way she wants. Then there’s my middle daughter who turned twenty last month. Her name is Zion. And Zion decided after she graduated from high school that she wanted to do missionary work. So she’s off right now helping people in Haiti. And last, but certainly not least, is my youngest daughter, Zynique, who’s seventeen, a senior in high school. Zynique has decided she’s going to own a dance studio after she graduates from high school. I suspect it will be a few years before that happens. The girl loves to dance! And she’s good at it, too. So despite her father’s and my insistence that she should still go to college and then start her own company, she’s interning with a woman who has her own studio. Zynique has concluded that she’s learning just as much of what she needs to know from Madame Perry—that’s the lady who owns the dance studio—if not more, being hands on with her.”
“An interesting set of children you have,” Ethan said as he suddenly broke out into a jog.
Without even thinking about it, I jogged right along with him. “Yes, they are. But I’m proud of them. I had planned on working at Social Security to help them with their college expenses, but as it happens, none of them appear to need me for that. In fact, my children are the reason I decided to leave Social Security and start my own company.” I was breathing harder now, a real indication of how out of shape I really was. But then it hit me how far we’d jogged without taking a break, and I was feeling pumped about that, although I knew my body would likely pay for this later tonight.
Ethan glanced over at me and began to slow things back to a walk. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d looked physically distressed and whether, had he been jogging alone, he would have even stopped at that point.
“So you’re saying that your children were the reason you left that great-paying job with all of those great benefits? Everybody knows that people who work for the government have terrific jobs.”
“Yeah.” I was attempting to talk while at the same time trying to catch my breath. “You see . . . they were each . . . following their . . . dreams. . . .”
“And you realized that you’d put your dreams on hold,” Ethan said, tremendously helping me out by completing my sentence for me.
“Precisely,” I said.
“I’ve been there. But couldn’t you have waited and started the business after you retired or did it while you were working at Social Security? That way you could have still gotten a check while earning your retirement benefits.” He glanced over at me with a quick smile. “You know how we do.”
I pressed my hand into my right side as I continued to walk. I could feel slight pain there, but I wasn’t going to wimp out and tell Ethan I needed to stop, not at this point. Besides, what’s that saying? No pain, no gain.
“Yeah, I could have stayed,” I said. “But I started noticing that more and more people I personally knew were dying all around me. Most of them were in their early fifties and sixties, and there they were dying. So I started thinking: Who’s to say I’ll be around when it’s time for me to retire? Who’s to say I’ll be in good health when that time arrives? Who’s to say that financially, even, I’d be any better off by the time I’m old enough and have enough service to retire to do it?”
“All good points.”
I let my hand dangle down at my side as I picked up the pace to keep up with Ethan. “Besides,” I said, still speaking as I walked. “This opportunity seemed to have landed in my lap. I had been praying about starting my own business, and it was like God lined everything up just for me. And I’m sure you know that when God says it’s time, you have to move on it. You can’t stand in a place of indecision. You have to jump on it right then, or the cloud will still be moving and you’ll find yourself totally left behind.”
“Redeeming the time,” Ethan said.
“What?”
“Redeeming the time. You know: redeeming the time is making the most of every opportunity, even when it looks like you arrived late for the event,” he said. “It’s doing several things at once in order to catch up. Sort of like what you and I are doing right now. We’re walking while at the same time talking and catching up on lost time.”
“Yeah. Okay. Redeeming the time.”
Ethan broke out into a jog again. I started to jog with him, but, a few steps into it, I decided I didn’t want to. So I continued to walk. He looked back at me, grinned, then began to run full out.
I laughed. “Show-off,” I yelled after him. But he was too far gone to likely have even heard me.
Chapter 9
Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
—Ephesians 5:17
I’d walked three miles in a few seconds under fifty-two minutes. I had to admit: walking with Ethan had caused my time to be better than at any other time, at least in my adult lifetime. He held his index finger high in the air, letting me know that he was going to do one more lap . . . finish up one more mile, making a total of six miles for him. He started running at full speed again. I was now sitting at a picnic table, merely a spectator. As I watched him, I couldn’t help but notice that, even with him being well over forty, the look of his body and the condition of his body were both impressive. There was absolutely no denying these facts.
After performing his cooling-down routine (something else I never bothered to do), he came over to the table and sat across from me.
“What are you grinning about?” I asked as he sat there staring intensely at me with a full grin on his face.
“Oh, nothing. I’m just”—he cocked his head a little—“what is the correct word I’m looking for? Impressed. Yeah, I’m impressed.”
“Is that right? And what exactly are you impressed about? The fact that you ran laps around me . . . literally. I mean you did two miles for every one that I did.”
“But you held your own,” Ethan said with several nods. “I’m scared of you. A few more sessions with me and you’ll be running me into the ground.”
“A few more sessions with you?” I released a hearty laugh. “In your dreams! In . . . your . . . dreams.”
“Oh, now, we don’t want to talk about my dreams. I know you don’t want to hear about my dreams lately.” He wiped the pouring-down sweat from his face with a blue hand towel.
I knew that was an opening for me to take, but I refused to walk through that door. I remained quiet.
“Do you have any water in your car?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” I said.
“Well, would you mind sharing with a brother?”
“Okay, hold up. Do you mean to tell me that you came here, ran full out like that, and you didn’t bring any water with you?”
He ticked his head and smiled, wiping his face again with
the towel. “I suppose that’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Well, that’s an unwise thing to do. You shouldn’t be running like that, knowing you’re going to need some water afterward, and not have any on hand.”
He coughed a few times. “I know. So are you going to share your water with me or not?”
I stood up. “I guess I’ll share. I’d hate to be like those people Jesus used in that parable He told. You know, the parable about those folks who passed by the wounded man lying on the side of the road, essentially leaving him to die.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Ethan said as he stood up. “Be a Good Samaritan and help me out.”
“I’ll go get it and bring it back,” I said.
“It’s okay. I’ll walk with you to your car and get it.”
“Yeah, I guess that would be good.” I looked at my watch. I’d been gone for over an hour now. “I do need to get back to the shop. Although I doubt anyone has called or come by. Things have been really slow these days.” After I said it, I felt I shouldn’t have said that to him. He was a customer. Besides, it may have sounded like I was asking him to help me . . . to send me some business, which I absolutely wasn’t doing. I just felt so at home whenever I was with Ethan. He’s always had that effect on me. He’d once admitted it was mutual. Years back, when we were talking as a young couple, he used to say I was “like Converse tennis shoes—a perfect fit.”
We reached my car. I unlocked it and got in to get the bottle of water I’d brought with me. He gestured for me to unlock the other side, which I did. He got in and sat in the passenger’s seat.
“What are you doing?” I said, in a teasing tone.
“Waiting on you to get my water.”
“I told you I was getting it.” I found the bottle of water and handed it to him.
He immediately twisted off the cap and drank half of it, without even taking a breathing break.
“Good grief!” I said. “How do you do that?”
He lowered the bottle and removed it from his mouth. “Do what?”
“Drink so much water at one time.”
“I’m thirsty. That was a good workout today, a really good workout. What can I say? You inspire me.”
“So what are you trying to tell me?” I asked. “That you don’t normally work out like that?”
“Oh, I do. But you make a man want to push himself a little harder, to go a little farther.” He suddenly cast his eyes down. Seconds later, he looked into my eyes.
And it was at that point, as I really looked into his eyes, it was as though a light inside of him had been dimmed to its lowest settings, almost turned completely off. And he wasn’t pretending either to garner my sympathy. I don’t think he even knew I could see it. Ethan was hurting. And it appeared to be a deep hurt.
Instinctively, I reached over and touched his hand. Big mistake. He seized my hand and squeezed it. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m seriously thinking about quitting everything.”
“Everything? What do you mean by everything?”
“My marriage, for one. I’m actually thinking about getting a divorce. My wife and I are so far apart it’s not even funny. I’m thinking about divorcing her and going somewhere like Colorado or California. I’m also considering taking a break from the church. I don’t mean I’ll stop going to church, just stop doing what I do ministry-wise.”
“Oh, now, things can’t be that bad. Can they?”
“Oh”—he sang the word—“but it is.” He looked down as though he was ashamed of the words coming from his mouth. I could see he needed someone to listen to him, hear him out. “I’m just tired. I’m tired. I’ve tried to make things work at home and at church, for so long, at some point you just get tired of trying.” He looked at me. “Do you know what I’m saying?”
Yeah, I knew what he was saying. But I wasn’t going to hijack his pity party and make it mine. “You know, Ethan, we all go through tough times. You just have to keep praying and find a way to make things better. And I believe things are going to get better.”
“I’ve tried. I’m telling you: everything I know to do, I’ve done it and then some. The only reasons I haven’t left yet, and the only thing that’s been keeping me from leaving right now, today, are my girls. I just can’t leave them. They need me. They do. I’m the one who actually takes care of them.”
“I’m sure you do a lot for them, but don’t you think you may be being a bit hard on your wife?”
He made a grunting sound. “Hard? Okay, let’s see what you think, and you let me know if I’m being too hard on her. My wife goes to work—that’s when she decides she wants to work, but that’s another subject for another time. When she comes home from work, usually I’ve cooked dinner and have food ready and on the table.”
“Hold up.” I raised my hand as though I were a human stop sign. “You cook?”
“Yes, I cook.”
I raised my hand again. “Hold up. And you have food ready when she gets home? Supper is done and waiting when your wife comes home?”
He tilted his head to the side and tried, without success, not to smile. “Yes.”
“You have to excuse me for staying on this a minute, but you’re a rarity, that’s for sure. It’s hard to find a man who will cook every now and then, let alone cook almost every day and have food ready when his wife comes home.”
He shook his head. “I know. But if I don’t cook, then my girls don’t get a decent meal. Okay, it’s like this. My wife is supposed to get off work at five. Her job is fifteen miles from our house. Given that traffic can be heavy during that time, it still shouldn’t take her but thirty . . . maybe forty-five minutes, no more than an hour, even on a bad day, to get home. Almost every single night, she never steps foot in the house before six-fifty-five. She then waltzes in, speaks to the girls, gets a plate, dishes out the food I’ve fixed for her, changes her clothes, and back out the door she goes again.”
“You’re kidding me, right? I know you’re kidding.”
“Nope. I’m not kidding. If I’m lying, I’m flying.”
“Well, in defense of your wife, I will say that women need to get out every now and then.”
“My wife does this pretty much every single night.”
“She sounds a lot like my husband.” I said it before I could stop myself.
“Your husband does that, too?”
“Yes.” I tried to play it down. “But he’s a man. That’s what men do. Right? My husband comes home and, back when all of our girls were young and still at home, he would spend a little time with them, eat, then leave to ‘get with his boys.’ ”
“First off, I honestly can’t believe your husband would leave anything as wonderful as you at home to go be with a bunch of hard legs.” Ethan primped his mouth and shook his head. “No way.”
“Well, he did. And he still does. At least, that’s what he used to do or that’s what he used to say that he was doing. These days, he goes to the horse or dog track, the bingo hall, the casino some hours away, I don’t know. In any event, he’s been leaving me like this since two days after we said our wedding vows.” I forced a smile, hoping to not let Ethan know just how much this topic really hurt. “But . . . back to you. So tell me: what are your daughters’ names and how old are they now?” I said to change the conversation to a lighter, more pleasant topic.
“I have three daughters.”
“Three? When I saw you at Rich’s that time, you only had two.”
“Yeah, we had another daughter a little after that. My oldest daughter’s name is Ashley. She’s seventeen, a senior in high school this year, and she wants to be a nurse. Phoenix Arissa is fifteen and a sophomore. And there’s my baby girl, Jacquetta, who will turn eight on November twenty-eighth.”
“Wow, my youngest daughter was born on November twenty-eight. That’s something. Listening to you, it’s evident you’re absolutely crazy about them.”
“I am. I love those girls so much. I love being a father, wh
ich is why I don’t want to leave my wife. I’m sure she’ll want full custody of them, just to spite me and to make their lives miserable, even though she doesn’t spend much time with them now. I’m the one who takes them to their dance lessons, karate lessons, picks them up from various after-school activities and practices when they participate in sports. I try to attend all of their functions, which can be hard when you have as much on your plate as I do.” He laughed. “In fact, when they were little, I was the one who did their hair for them.”
“No,” I said. “You can comb and plait hair?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “I can plait and braid hair. And when Ashley participated in that event to be a debutante, I was the one traveling everywhere when she and I were trying to find a long white gown and the white gloves she would need. The dress couldn’t be ivory, pearl, or champagne. We had to find a white one. It was hard, but we found one. And let’s not forget the pearls. Can’t forget the pearls. She had to have pearls as well. Phoenix Arissa is heavy into ballet these days. They’re practicing for a presentation of the Nutcracker. I’m the one who makes sure she gets to her rehearsals, even when her mother is home ‘resting’ from being out late Friday night and into early Saturday morning.”
“Just curious, but why do you call your middle daughter Phoenix Arissa instead of just Phoenix or Arissa even, which are both beautiful names I might add?”
“Oh, she was the one who decided that’s what she wanted to be called.” Ethan let out a chuckle. “When she was a little girl, after we taught her her full name, she liked saying Phoenix Arissa. Later, if you merely called her Phoenix, she’d say, ‘You said it wrong! It’s Phoenix Arissa.’ So, we started calling her Phoenix Arissa. To this day, that’s what she still insists on being called. It’s what she wants.”
I smiled. “It sounds like you have a great relationship with her.”
“I do with all of them.” He turned his body squarely to face me. “You see, I believe that if men would show their daughters the way they should be treated, they’ll have higher standards of how they’ll stand to be treated when it’s not daddy. Then when some guy steps to them, if they’re not being treated the way they were treated by their fathers, dude will have to step off and step back. I don’t want my daughters ever feeling like they missed out on anything from me—attempting to find it in some knucklehead who, in all fairness to some of these boys that don’t have fathers or a good man in their lives, were never taught or shown how to treat a woman right.”
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