Tonight, I thought of something I hadn't thought of in years, or rather someone I hadn't thought of in years, someone who caused me to end up grounded for a while when I was, oh, probably about 13 or 14 years old....
I happened to think about it because I picked up a book at our church some time back, it was a book that had belonged to my pastor. Tucked inside the pages of the book, "Heaven The Last Frontier," was a little slip of paper that, I assume, my pastor had written on. It read, "angels, chapter 11, page 143." So, I skipped to page 143 and began to read about angels.
The author, Grant R. Jeffrey, told how angels have names but, we only know the names of five angels: Satan, Apollyon, Michael, Gabriel and Palomi.
And that's when I thought of Gabriel. The unfamiliar, blonde, curly haired young man who asked me to help him catch a ride from one end of Harrison, Arkansas back down to the square. For some crazy reason, I had gotten the idea to walk all the way across town, myself, that day, something I had never done before and never did again. I really wasn't cherishing the idea of walking all the way back but, it never occured to me to thumb a ride, and it never would have, if it hadn't been for Gabriel.
As we stood there with our thumbs out we got to know a little bit about each other, and I ended up telling him about a piece of property that belonged to one of my family members, where I went to get away from the crowd (as if there was one in Harrison, Arkansas at the time). Gabriel was looking for just such a place and I offered to take him there to show him my secret place on the other side of the creek.
That was back when the creek was known as the creek, "Crooked Creek" was what it had always been called when I was growing up there. It's been known as Lake Harrison for years, now. But, we were headed to the other side. Not the side of the creek that bordered what was Harrison High School, at the time.
I can't remember the name of the road with the big hill we had to climb. My Grandma and Grandpa's house sat on the corner, on Walnut Street, about a third of the way there. Later, we would dip down the street to the right, the one that my Aunt Betty and Uncle Kenneth lived on for years. Right across the street from the house my step-brother built, was the entry onto the property. I think it belonged to my Uncle Kenneth then.
It was beautiful that day. The dirt paths, the green grass, cutting through the weeds to find the spot with the big branch hanging across the creek.
Gabriel said he used to live in some kind of a community. The girls and boys weren't really even supposed to hold hands like he and I did on the way down to the creek bank.
We talked. He talked about what it was like growing up in that community and I don't even remember what I talked about. Then we walked back out, went our separate ways at the fork in the road, I headed back to my house up on Birch Street and Gabriel headed to the downtown area.
I never saw Gabriel again, which made the mystery that much more intriguing to teenage girl. I even wondered if he was an angel, just like his name suggested. He was very nice, older than me, and I caught what for when I got back home and was so elated about my new friend, not even considering I might have done anything wrong...wow, did I get an ear full. And rightly so, I mean, anything could have happened to me in that secret place down by the creek, there was no one around and no one would have come around. And what was I doing helping him hitch hike???
I was a really lucky girl that day. Really lucky (or blessed, with an angel watching over me).
One thing was sure, I had plenty of time to fantasize about whether Gabriel was an angel or a boy. It was quite the inspiration for a shy, introverted young girl, grounded at home, to lay home on her bed with her notebook and pen and write poetry. Somewhere, out in that awful mess of a garage there's a notebook....
Funny, I should find myself, all these years later, writing about Gabriel again.
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