Secrets

There is always one guy in the neighborhood that is so good at hide-and-seek that you’d swear the guy can disappear. The crazy thing is that he was always hiding close enough to home base that he could see who had been found and who hadn’t.

I learned to hide in the third grade after I got into big trouble with my dad and I promised myself I would never be found again. By anybody.

Hiding takes a lot out of you. It is hard on you to swallow a big secret and keep it down. Some of us have been hiding so long we can’t remember the reason we’re hiding. Whatever the reason, it usually goes back to something that hurt and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So we become a turtle with head, legs and tail pulled in under the shell.

Some of us are not much more than a shell.

There is a scene in the movie Absence of Malice where a young woman’s uncle (Paul Newman) is accused of racketeering. She knows he is innocent because they were together at the time of the crime (out of town for her abortion). She doesn’t dare confess it to the newspaper reporter who is covering the story (Sally Field) because she was in Catholic school at the time and it would hurt her family and the sisters.

She ends up telling her story to help her uncle. The next day it was on the front page.

Before sunrise she is sitting on the front porch waiting for the paper. She hasn’t slept. She is in her robe.

When the paper is thrown in the yard you can feel her fear. She scans the story. Then, she goes from house to house in the neighborhood picking up every newspaper. Later that day she commits suicide.

Everyone is carrying something that is heavy and difficult to bear. Some secret. A reason for hiding.

There must be a way we can help each other hear some of the best words any child of any age can hear: “Come out, come out wherever you are;” and then, “All-ee, All-ee in free!”

Wherever you are, whatever your secret fears, you are closer to home than you know.