What follows is a passage I originally wrote for my book The Mystery of Children, but which didn’t survive the final edit. It tells of a time in my twenties when I was a caseworker with Big Brothers, an organization that matches men with fatherless boys in a mentoring relationship. The stories I could tell from this period could fill a book. This is just one.
My first Little Brother was a ten-year-old named Dennis. From the beginning my friendship with Dennis was magical. We liked each other enormously, spent tons of time together, and always had fun.
One windy autumn morning we were just lolling around on the baseball diamond wondering what to do next, when suddenly he said, “Why don’t we go for a little hike?”
“Why not?” I responded.
“And how about we take a little lunch along?”
It was a running joke between us that we were both always scheming about our next meal, like Pooh and his honey pot. So we went and raided his mother’s fridge and made a pile of peanut butter sandwiches and threw in a bag of chocolate chip cookies and a thermos of kool-aid. Dennis put everything in a knapsack and strapped it on his back and off we went.
So we went and raided his mother’s fridge and made a pile of peanut butter sandwiches and threw in a bag of chocolate chip cookies and a thermos of kool-aid. Dennis put everything in a knapsack and strapped it on his back and off we went.
Little did we realize at that point that we would be gone the whole afternoon, and would end up hiking around the entire shoreline of the lake, a distance of some seven miles over rough terrain. That kid had amazing stamina, to say nothing of a boundless fount of the sheer joy of living.
Can you imagine going on a long hike with a ten-year-old and never once hearing a complaint? Never a hint of tension or problems? With Dennis it was always like that, never any need for discipline or scolding, never a gloomy thought or a dull moment. And this was a kid from a severely troubled, broken home.
So Dennis was one amazing boy. And this was no ordinary hike, either, no stroll through the woods to granny’s house. There was no path at all; we went right along the shore of the lake, scrambling over boulders and fallen tree trunks, fording streams, wading marshes, negotiating steep banks, grasping onto roots to keep our balance, crawling through barbed wire and thick undergrowth like army cadets in boot camp. And all the while the wind was blowing a gale.
Not until we were halfway around the lake did we really decide to go all the way. So then it was time to sit down and have the sandwiches. One little scrap of conversation during lunch I will never forget. There were big fat cumulus clouds rolling overhead and the sun was dipping in and out among them. The day was cool, and so were we, so every time the sun reappeared we’d give a big cheer.
“Which would you rather be?” I asked Dennis. “A big cloud or a little cloud?”
Right away he darted back, “A little one. Because that way I wouldn’t have to rain.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wouldn’t ever have to cry.”
In that moment, a peculiar realization came to me: that even at ten years old, being good-natured and joyful isn’t wholly a gift. It’s something one consciously works at and treasures. It’s a choice. A choice anyone can make.
No one else in Dennis’s family had made that choice. Even his own mother eventually rejected him, sending him away to live with an uncle. And after that, I never saw him again.
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