Thou Shalt Not Kill
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Thou shalt not kill. You’d think, for a halfway normal Mormon woman like me, that would be the easiest commandment to keep. It’s certainly easier than trying to fast when there’s chocolate in the house, or trying not to covet my neighbor’s hunky body, although British actor Richard Armitage is, strictly speaking, not my neighbor. But there’ve been at least two times in my life when I’ve very nearly caused the death of people closest to me, and one of those times was not an accident.
The first incident came when my younger son was seven years old and we were driving back from stake conference. After two hours of conference and most of the half-hour drive home, both boys were starting to get on my nerves, to put it mildly. By the time we were within a kilometer of home, I had had it.
“If you two don’t stop, you can get out and walk!” I threatened, and when they didn’t stop, I pulled over and made them get out. It wasn’t very far to our house, with only one major crossing, and they knew the way. I thought I could have a few moments of solitude before they arrived. But I’d scarcely been home two minutes when the phone rang and a woman told me that my younger son had been hit by a car.
After suffering a traumatic brain injury, he was in a coma for a week, but became gradually more responsive. When I visited him on my birthday, about ten days after the accident, he sat up and called out happily, “Mom!” All in all, he spent two and a half weeks in the hospital, and two and a half months in a special rehab center, but eventually, he recovered perfectly.
You’d think I would have learned to watch what I say. And for the most part, I did. But some years later, my mouth got me into trouble again. It was another Sunday, but this time we were at the ward, getting ready for a communal lunch, like we always did on the fifth Sunday of the month. I’d spent the previous day working hard on my contributions to the buffet and now, after three hours of meetings, I was hungry and ready to eat. Nobody else seemed to be in a hurry, though; almost everybody else was standing around talking, as they usually did. I found my older son in a corner of the room that we use for a chapel on Sunday mornings and for a multi-purpose hall the rest of the time, and encouraged him to help set up the tables and chairs.
When I came back from getting something out of the car, however, he hadn’t moved, and I frowned. “Come on!” I said, and quoted one of the songs we’d recently sung. “Put your shoulder to the wheel!”
But instead of getting right to work, he came over and hugged me, snuggling his head and one shoulder to my chest. I hugged him back automatically while my mouth demanded, “Do I look like a wheel?”
He stepped back and mustered my curvy figure critically. It is curvy – technically – just in all the wrong places.
“Well …” my son said slowly. “You are round.”
written January 2012
Thou shalt not kill. You’d think, for a halfway normal Mormon woman like me, that would be the easiest commandment to keep. It’s certainly easier than trying to fast when there’s chocolate in the house, or trying not to covet my neighbor’s hunky body, although British actor Richard Armitage is, strictly speaking, not my neighbor. But there’ve been at least two times in my life when I’ve very nearly caused the death of people closest to me, and one of those times was not an accident.
The first incident came when my younger son was seven years old and we were driving back from stake conference. After two hours of conference and most of the half-hour drive home, both boys were starting to get on my nerves, to put it mildly. By the time we were within a kilometer of home, I had had it.
“If you two don’t stop, you can get out and walk!” I threatened, and when they didn’t stop, I pulled over and made them get out. It wasn’t very far to our house, with only one major crossing, and they knew the way. I thought I could have a few moments of solitude before they arrived. But I’d scarcely been home two minutes when the phone rang and a woman told me that my younger son had been hit by a car.
After suffering a traumatic brain injury, he was in a coma for a week, but became gradually more responsive. When I visited him on my birthday, about ten days after the accident, he sat up and called out happily, “Mom!” All in all, he spent two and a half weeks in the hospital, and two and a half months in a special rehab center, but eventually, he recovered perfectly.
You’d think I would have learned to watch what I say. And for the most part, I did. But some years later, my mouth got me into trouble again. It was another Sunday, but this time we were at the ward, getting ready for a communal lunch, like we always did on the fifth Sunday of the month. I’d spent the previous day working hard on my contributions to the buffet and now, after three hours of meetings, I was hungry and ready to eat. Nobody else seemed to be in a hurry, though; almost everybody else was standing around talking, as they usually did. I found my older son in a corner of the room that we use for a chapel on Sunday mornings and for a multi-purpose hall the rest of the time, and encouraged him to help set up the tables and chairs.
When I came back from getting something out of the car, however, he hadn’t moved, and I frowned. “Come on!” I said, and quoted one of the songs we’d recently sung. “Put your shoulder to the wheel!”
But instead of getting right to work, he came over and hugged me, snuggling his head and one shoulder to my chest. I hugged him back automatically while my mouth demanded, “Do I look like a wheel?”
He stepped back and mustered my curvy figure critically. It is curvy – technically – just in all the wrong places.
“Well …” my son said slowly. “You are round.”
written January 2012