Screams came from the hallway this morning at 6:39 AM:
“Oh, my gosh! Dude! What the… Oh, gross. What’s that smell!”
I heard one kid gagging at another kid.
“What!?”
The other kid shot back — the way a guilty man might feign being offended at being asked where he was the night of November such and such in 1983.
“Dude, it’s your backpack. What the crap is that?”
The first kid was appalled and literally gagging now.
Pulling away and trying not to make eye contact with anyone, Stinky looked toward the ground and simply shrugged his shoulders.
I stepped into the hallway and it hit me.
“Sweet Lord. What’s in there?” My throat tightened.
“I don’t know,” he whispered, still looking down.
“Well, have… you… checked?!” My voice was getting higher and louder with every syllable.
Knowing that he was defeated, he dropped the backpack at my feet and slinked away. The smell was sour and musty, but also sweet; like a flooded basement full of old lip gloss.
I unzipped the bag.
Over the winter break — a day short of three entire weeks — a lot of things occurred:
Countless Christmas gatherings, parties, concerts, shopping trips, hiking trips, card games, movies, a weekend jaunt to Atlanta to see my brother and his family, and — good grief — we even went on a cruise. All seven of us. From Mobile, Alabama to Cozumel, Mexico and back home again. We visited a whole ‘nother country a couple of weeks ago! It was a pretty remarkable break. My goodness, we even rang in a brand new year! A new decade!
A pretty remarkable break, indeed.
And while all of that was happening: the gatherings and parties, and family adventures and what-not; this backpack… A blue one, with gray piping and big, white, stitched, block letters that read: “QUINN”… sat in the corner of a closet… festering.
Have you ever almost fallen down because of a smell? I hadn’t either until this morning. My knees buckled and I dropped the bag, grasping for the wall to hold me.
I guess he just wasn’t hungry the day I packed the Turkey and Cheese sandwich, raspberries, yogurt cup, Doritos, fruit snacks, and chocolate milk, because the lunch sack remained — smashed and leaking — exactly where he had shoved it back in mid-December. Last month. Last year.
He’s on the bus now, unbruised (by God’s grace) and unfazed. His backpack is in the washer. I have a strange, dull headache. And I’m going back to bed.
Happy New Year.