Pendulum Swings: The Jared Chronicles, Part 2

This morning, I'm standing outside of work, desperately wracking my brain for new tricks and manipulations to convince Jared to come inside, into the nice cool air conditioning, but no dice. He's talking, dead-set on having my full attention until his van arrives to take him off to work. Little does he know I haven't heard a word he's said. I'm trying to figure out how I can keep him happy and still get my paperwork done on time. Suddenly, something he says snaps me out of it:

"My friend Shawn died."

"Really? What happened?"

"Oh, he was sleeping, and then he got sick, and then he died."

What do you say to that?

"That's sad."

"Yuh. I went to his funeral."

"That's good."

"Yuh. I put my hand on his coffin. Like this." Jared reaches out and pats the hood of my car gently, then lets his hand rest.

"I care about him. He's my friend," Jared says solemnly, staring through the blue steel.

I'm struck by his gesture, by his use of the present tense. My eyes drop to the pavement, looking down at the driveway to avoid being blinded by tenderness. Jeremy's dog Bud is lying panting on the sidewalk. Subject change.

"Big Kris got a puppy."

"Really?"

"Yeah! He looks just like Bud, only little and yellow."

Jared scrunches up his face in irritation. "Not yellow. Bud's a chocolate lab."

"I know... Big Kris got a yellow lab."

"Bud's a chocolate lab. But he can't have chocolate chip cookies. They're poison to him. Only me. Only I get cookies. Not Bud."

He says this with every ounce of profundity with which he just spoke of Shawn. I can't help but bust out laughing. I guess wisdom comes in many forms.

In his recent poem, "How to Be a Poet," Wendell Berry writes:

There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

I think I know what he means...