Early in our family’s vacation to the mountains, my wife got sick. What awful bad luck! Instead of days spent hiking and evenings sipping adult beverages, she was plastered to the couch, enduring mindless Netflix movies.
One afternoon, she suddenly got to her feet and scurried outside to the back porch. She returned, her face crestfallen. “I thought I heard a rustle below,” she explained. “I really want to see a bear.”
That evening, our youngest child, who had already developed a cough, complained of an earache. I hustled her into the car in hopes of getting to town before the urgent care clinic closed. We drove out of the driveway and around the corner…
And there was a black bear! She was loping down the street, not even twenty feet ahead of us. She turned off the pavement into the woods, but as I eased past, the bear posed beside a tree. At the first stoplight in town, I texted the picture to my wife.
She immediately replied, “OMG!!”
I texted back, “OMB!!” and got a smiley face emoji in return.
After a doctor diagnosed an ear infection, we picked up the pink, syrupy antibiotic and headed back to the cabin. I had no sooner helped my daughter into the bath when my oldest son thundered down the stairs,
“Come quick! It’s a bear!”
The same bear sat on the hillside just outside the cabin, chewing on crab apples that she pulled from a tree. Our kids were delighted. But the best sight was of my wife; for the first time in days, she radiated joy.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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