Driving a truck cross-country gives a man a lot of time to think. . . . . Especially when traveling through what seems like an endless desert. That alone can stir up any long-lost memories as quick as a dust storm can kick up clouds of blinding sand. I was on my way back home to Okeechobee on a trip that started off in hell. Well, hot as hell. Sin City! Smack-dab in the middle of summer. Here I was surrounded by nothing but vast desert, where every inch of land is withered from the scorching sun, so hot that even the tumbleweeds scurry to avoid the blazing heat.

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The vast openness of the desert expanded my horizons, both literally and figuratively. Timidly, I questioned why I found myself so isolated in the first place. As I reluctantly began to step outside my comfort zone to confront this notion, a spiritual energy seemed to welcome me with open arms. And despite the desert's lifeless terrain, I intuitively sensed personal growth that would soon immerse my very soul. I would be confronted by truths that were inconceivably hard to accept, yet absolutely necessary in bringing me home, full circle. Just one problem; I feared knowing now what I didn't know then. Despite my fears, I buckled up for the bumpy ride ahead.

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As I kept trucking down the desolate highway, a rabbit suddenly appeared from out of nowhere and ran directly in front of my path. And just when I thought it would make it safely across the road it stopped dead-in-its-tracks. As I continued barreling straight at the little critter, it remained perfectly still. . . Frozen in Fear. I instinctively knew I could not swerve an eighteen-wheeler to avoid hitting a little rabbit, so the closer I got to the inevitable roadkill the more I blessed the vultures soon-to-be next meal. I cried out, "Don't move little' guy!" I did not want to look back, but I did. Not at the rabbit, but at myself. I looked all the way back, to the very beginning.

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The heat, the terror in that rabbit's eyes, together, it conjured up a story that my mom had once told me, a long long time ago. It was a hot sweltering night in mid July, the year was nineteen sixty, my mother, still seven months pregnant with me laid next to my father in bed, when suddenly, she recalled, my dad clutched his chest, then gasp, and by the time she had realized what happened he was dead from a massive heart attack! The tranquility that I must have felt in-utero had to become an abysmal environment. In an instant, both of our lives were literally turned upside down. My mom had just lost the father of her six children, and soon to be seven. Me, "Lucky Number 7."

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Like howling winds that echo throughout the desert canyon walls, I still can remember hearing my mom's grieving over the death of my father coming from inside of that bedroom, even now, some fifty years later, weeping, that would only stop whenever I tried to reach-up to turn the door-knob to enter her room. Being so young back then I never understood as to why she was crying so much, particularly with it being several years after my father's passing. Furthermore, I don't recall seeing any framed pictures of dear ole' dad being displayed around the house, let alone knowing anything about him at the time. My mom must have thought that any stories about

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my dad's demise should not be told to me until I was much older, most likely in an attempt to thwart off any disturbing emotions that I might have experienced at such a young and vulnerable age. Nevertheless, my father's life-story would be a tale with a plot that never had a chance to fully unfold. Like a book, with many of its chapters ripped out of it. Slammed shut! With its bookmark stuck, dead-center, right in the middle of it. A very short-story without a happy ending, placed high upon a shelf collecting dust. . .

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