Resurrection
As a child I used to play a game with the older kids who, prodded by the descrapancy in our respective statures, swooped and cooed around me at church. It was a rather gruesome little game, in that again and again I would exercise my giggling wrath, smiting my fellow players. Then, one by one they’d resurrect, cued by the clapping of my tiny hands. And that was how I learned about death. A fake plastic sword was the cruel hand of fate, but never so cruel that my Lazarus’ escaped the miraculous and benevolent sound of this child’s clapping hands. So, it should not seem strange when, quite a few years later, I happened upon a terrible accident on the side of the road, just down the street from a neat house with a green yard, that my first thought was to applaud.