A Shakespeare Moment
By Kathy T. Camp
A man throws the ball. The little blonde-headed boy dashes across the green grass to catch a little white ball, as if catching it will save someone’s life. He reaches, jumps, stretches and grabs it in his glove-- the smile that emerges lights up my whole yard.
“Wow! That was incredible!” I say.
“O.K. Now run back a little. Get back a little further.”
The man throws the ball. The little blonde boy looks up, moving forward just a little, then stares at it long and hard. The ball drops in his glove. It’s as if his eyes are a magnet that brings the ball right into his leather-covered hand.
I hear the screen door slam and a little girl comes running outside holding a small paperback book.
“Mama, listen to this! I’m reading Romeo and Juliet.” She says while galloping towards me. When she stops, she adds, “Shakespeare’s good!” She begins thumbing through the book.
“I’m looking for the right page. O.K. Here it is. Listen to this. It is soooo good!” She states.
She starts off with Benvolio’s line,
In love? She pauses, Out.
Of love?
Out of her favour, where I am in love.
Alas, that love, so gentle in his view,
Should be so tyrrr..annous and rough in proof.
She continues for a minute, not looking up from her book.
Then she pauses and checks to see if I’m paying attention.
“Listen to this line!”
“I am, sweetie. I’m listening!” I glance over at her father who’s still tossing balls to our son.
Here's much to do with hate, but more with love:
Why then, O’ brawling love! O’ loving hate!
O’ any thing, of nothing first created!
O’ heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!—
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?
- No, coz; I rather weep.
She looks up at me and states her opinion. “This is awesome!”
Her brother hollers, “I didn’t understand it. What’s it about?”
She gives him a one sentence summary. “It’s about how bad love is!”
Her father glances at me and says, “Yea, it’s about how bad it is.”
The son runs, catching the flying white ball.
The daughter, stands beside me, reciting the lines again. I interrupt her.
“What’s your favorite line?”
She begins, “O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!”
She continues her reading, with lots of passion. Her face changes with each line, indicating a deep understanding of what she is seamlessly reciting. A grin breaks across my face and something inside of me swells to the point that I feel as if I am going weep.
“Watch this one!” the father states.
I see our son diving towards us, getting a little too close to the cement driveway, but he catches the ball and stops just short of a skint knee.
“Zebbie, that was great!” I exclaim.
He gets up and runs back again.
“O.K. I’m throwing it left.”
The boy runs left, staring at the ball, jumping horizontal at just the right moment, and makes a catch that would make the cover of Sports Illustrated. I look at his dad. His smile is so big it looks like his cheeks are going to pop.
He’s having his Shakespeare moment while I’m having mine… and we both know it.
