LETTERS FROM HOME: LETTING THE BALL IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR STOMACH MELT AWAY

Nov. 6, 1997

Dear Patty,

When I was a boy in the bicycle years, my best friend was a girl named Beth who lived across the street. Beth was just a bit older, a bit husky and seemed to prefer boyish things over the preoccupations of her sisterhood, who as far as I knew led empty lives once they began growing out of dolls. Now, my nieces play baseball and soccer, swim competitively. In the 1950s, girls seemed to skip a lot of rope.

But not Beth. She drank coffee and never would have screamed over something as silly as a frog handshake. I'd have taken her on my team anytime but it was a general rule that boys didn't want girls playing their games. So Beth and I settled on one sport we could play together, and it didn't matter if anybody else played.

We played croquet, for hours and hours, until the wickets disappeared into the darkness in Beth's backyard. Sometimes people from the neighborhood joined in and once in awhile her sister Nancy played, but mostly Beth and I just played each other.

If one of the boys from school came over to my house, they'd never want to play croquet at Beth's. One called her "a big fat ox." I didn't invite him over again.

Beth and I were competitive but we never got mad when we lost. Endless lives of croquet playing lay before us.

Then one day when I went to Beth's house after school for some croquet, she said she didn't want to play. She didn't say she had to go somewhere or anything like that, just that she didn't want to play. And her voice sounded funny. In the days that followed I got the idea: Beth didn't want to play croquet with me anymore. She still played but I wasn't welcome.

I didn't know what to make of this hurt, so I closed it up in a ball in the pit of my stomach and started resenting Beth. I was just beginning to learn how important a role rejection plays in this human drama. What I felt was my feelings for Beth hardening into a little ball.

So now Beth was mad at me and I was mad at Beth. I'd look at her in her yard across the street and turn away if she looked back. This went on for days, maybe weeks.

Her sister Nancy, whom I'd never paid much attention, turned out to be a peacemaker. The peacemakers are blessed because God knows the rest of us are at war with ourselves or someone else most of the time.

Nancy told me that Beth had overheard that "big fat ox" comment and thought it had come from me. I told Nancy it hadn't, that I wouldn't say such a thing about Beth. Nancy told Beth. Then Nancy told me Beth said it was OK if I came over and played croquet.

It felt good to watch Beth take her stance over the ball again, hear the sound of wood on wood, feel that little ball in my stomach melting away.

Hurt feelings might be more intense in childhood simply because we haven't erected all our protective barriers yet. Hurt feelings can turn into hard feelings, and hard feelings can lead to feeling nothing at all. In fact, hard feeling are the worst.

"When we harbor negative emotions toward others or toward ourselves, or when we intentionally create pain for others, we poison our own physical and spiritual systems," Carolyn Myss writes in "Anatomy of the Spirit."

"By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person. It disables a person's emotional resources."

Beth's family moved to Kansas not long after those days. They came back for a visit years later. By then I was a new teen-ager grappling with a whole different set of feelings about girls, and these girls had grown up! I lay on the couch pretending to be interested in a book while Beth and Nancy tried to engage me in a conversation. Teen-age boys eventually discard the aloof act if they think about what they're doing, but Beth and Nancy must have left that day confused. I hope they have forgiven me by now.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.