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Jace Says

October 1, 2013 by Michael E Conner

Close Enough

Jace and my wife attended a local high school football game this last weekend.

At the conclusion of a play, the announcer came over the PA system: “Jace LaMunyon, the ball carrier…”

At this our Little Man leaned over to Mom and said, “Hey Mom, that’s exactly what they’ll say when I play football, except they’ll say ‘Jace Conner.'”

– – –

Jace and I took our first “guy trip” to the cabin in Canada a few years ago. I told him we might see bears.

Me: “So what if a bear comes after you?”

Jace: “I’ll stop, drop, and roll.”

– – –

Mom, to Jace: “Do you know who you belong to?”

Jace: “My family and Gramma and Pop.”

Mom: “Yes, but think bigger.”

Jace: “…And God.”

Mom: “Yes, and did you know that God planned you and knew you even before we did?”

Jace: “So, I’m a rental Jace!”

– – –

In line at the airport, Jace was speaking with a couple of ladies. He said, “You know, the thing about chicken is… if it’s hot, don’t touch it.”

– – –

As often as I can, I read to Jace at bedtime, even now that he is nearly finished with sixth grade. But the time for these treasured moments is all too quickly fading. In the fall, he gently told me he was too old for that, but I could tell him a story. So we do stories on many nights. As the school year has progressed however, I have occasionally slipped a book in once in a while, though quite different from the Hardy Boys books and Magic Treehouse series of those earlier years.

Now Ernie Pyle’s Brave Men, Louis Warren’s Lincoln’s Youth and Robert Frost’s poems are on his nightstand.

“I’m going to read one of our favorites. It’s on page 117. You help me finish it.”

Jace is lying on his side, with heavy eyes now and his blanket pulled up close under his chin. This poem we have read together and talked about afterward many times now. It has become “our” poem.

“Ok.”

I begin.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by…”