The Wheat Field

Read "Letters".

            It has been nearly three years since I dove into that pale green wheat, and I can still smell the moist soil under my face. The wheat grew right outside of the house that my family was building. Everyday I can gaze out of my bedroom window of this now built house and see the field that now grows alfalfa. Still, every time I glance at that field, there is only one thing that I see.

            My mind feels exhausted of this story that now feels so cliché and my lips tingle as if I have told this tale many times; but I have never once told anyone about that wheat. But that field reminds me, every single time I look at it, that what happened there three years ago is nothing that I can avert from; it is forever branded into my mind.

It was an early July evening, summer was just heating up, and me, my family, and my best friend, Aimee had all gone to see the hit Tom Cruise flick of the summer; “War of the Worlds”. Aimee and I were both often imprudent at this age, and I ignored the rules I was set to, no matter how strict they were. As our car pulled up to our house in construction, I grabbed Aimee’s shoulder and tugged her out of the car with me. “Come on!” I said to her, running towards the wheat field ahead, her sprinting behind me. Now as I look back on this event, I see the irony in me leading ahead of Aimee. When school was to resume, I had become some sort of a lackey to Aimee.

            She had found friends, that where a year under us, that she liked better than I; estranging me which led me to form some sort of a creed. I began to believe that if I just lagged behind her and did whatever she asked of me, she would eventually remember the bond we once had when we ran to that wheat field together. This led me to become something that I hoped never to become. I spent majority of my eighth grade year being latent, staying at home, and pronouncing myself a deceased ghost when I was at school.

But as we ran to the wheat field happily together, nothing of this matter ever would have come to my mind; I assumed that we would be best friends forever. Aimee’s laughter was echoing in my ear and my heartbeat was pounding triumphantly in my throat. We reached the edge of the wheat and began to slow to a jog. “This is so fun!” I claimed as I jumped high into the air and landed softly on a thick bed of wheat that scratched my arms painfully. That laugh of Aimee’s sounded loudly and cracked through the silence in the air, I will never forget that laugh.

“Come on! Just jump!” I encouraged her as I reposed on the wheat stretching out my arms. “No! I have nice clothes on. My mom will kill me if I get grass stains on this shirt!” she protested. “Fine, then.” I said, reclaiming my standing position. As soon as I stood back up, I jumped down on that wheat again, laughing hysterically at my stupidity.                       

I continued to fall down onto that wheat numerously, us both laughing so hard that our stomachs ached. We did this until we heard my father’s voice echo from the one floor of the house, telling us to stop destroying the wheat. I remember looking at her innocently, her returning the same look to me, and then we both cracked into more laughter.

Three years later, I can still look back at that day, and resume a small dose of the happiness that flourished in my heart. Happiness of having a best friend to save me from pain, expose my secrets to, and be stupid with. Losing Aimee as my best friend taught me fortitude, autonomy, and how to try to cope with loss of loved ones. Even though I had learned abundances, I still find myself feeling dejected and sometimes tears bubbling in my eyes when I look back on that evening in the wheat field.

It remains in my soul an event that will never fail to remind me of who I was then and what I felt. Those emotions that carried so much significance in my life disappeared before I was able to catch them in my fist and trap them. The wheat was harvested and gone away before the house construction was finished, and I never got a chance to see the craters that my body had made from my falls. The following summer after that, my father had built an electric fence along the border of the field and our yard. I have never been to that field since that evening.

The evening when we giggled at our immaturity and she helped me pluck away shards of wheat from my shirt, the evening when I tried hopelessly to exonerate myself from my parents’ anger of disregarding their rules of staying out of that wheat field, the evening when we gathered ourselves from laughing so vigorously and ran away from the wheat field together.

                           

 

 

Reviews

[lori c]

i love this little memoir. a snippet of time, a ghost of the past, come calling to remind us of where we came from and who we are. i wonder if you and aimee still keep in touch. there is some polishing to do on this , but the characters, setting, and sentiment are clear.
( for me, it was a corn , not wheat , field )
i almost feel as if this should be surrounded by more, why remember the wheat field now ? just my opinion. it's your write. and you know where it begins and ends.

[Nova]

Sweet. Short and sweet. I think you put alot of emotion into this and it turned out great. It's hard loosing a friend and you captured that feeling very well. Great Write.