Hearts Left Behind Read Online Free PDF

are
twice as long.
    I’m stumbling through the darkness only half way in
control.
    I’ve got half a heart and half a mind and half of
me is hole .
     
    I burn with twice the rage and I’m only half
forgiving.
    I’ve got twice as many children, only half of them
are living.
    I have twice the faith I used to have but pray with
half a soul,
    Cause it’s hard to
feel complete when only half of you is whole.

Willow Grove
    It’s funny, growing up in such a small town, you’d
think that maybe I felt like I had missed out on a few things, but never once
did I feel that way.  It always seemed to me that Willow Grove was just
exactly the kind of place a kid was supposed to grow up, and if you didn’t –
well then that was just your misfortune.  We had about what you’d expect
for a town this size, I suppose –a couple baseball diamonds, a tennis court, a
playground and a basketball court.  There was also a library, a grain
elevator, post office, a barber shop, my Aunt Paula’s beauty parlor, a gas
station, Pease Lumberyard, The Spotlight Grocery, Brenda’s Café, and I Like Ike’s Ice Cream parlor. 
    I Like Ike’s was kind of a neat little store, but I
once bought some Milk Duds there that tasted every bit as old as likable Ike
himself.  That’s why most of my Milk Duds were purchased at The Spotlight. 
Along with most of my Pals and Bazooka Joe bubble gum, pretzel sticks, Jolly
Ranchers, Jolly Good soda, candy cigarettes, baseball cards, fudgesicles , push-ups, and various other sugar
goodies.  It was also where Mom and Dad would send me to buy their
cigarettes.  I knew that smoking was bad for you, so it always made me
feel like a bit of an enabler, which was bad enough in itself.  But I also
felt like the person behind the counter thought that maybe I was buying them
for myself, which was even more disturbing to
me.  My routine was to ask for a pack of Winston’s, and then kind of shake
my head and shrug, and then snort out something clever like “Yeah, I wish my
parents would stop smoking these things” or, “These aren’t for me, you
know.  They’re for my dad.”
    More than anything, the best thing that Willow Grove
had to offer was its citizens.  People who found
contentment in who they were and what they had.   Some people would
call that simple, others would call it enlightened.  Whichever.  
All I know is that some of the finest people I’ve ever met were born and bred
in Willow Grove, Illinois.  There’s just something very special about
growing up here that you can’t quite put your finger on.  It’s wholesome,
it’s pure, it’s Midwest heartland, but there’s something more than that
even.  Like there’s just something understood among its inhabitants, a commonness born into us that
we’re reminded of regularly.  You hear it in secret hushes blowing through
the trees, passed down in leafy whispers.  You see it in the winking eye
of a neighbor.  You feel it in the Sunday morning handshake of the
minister.  Everything is a reminder and a validation of who you are and
where you’re from.  With every whisper, every wink, every handshake there
is a lesson that’s being passed on.  And I wonder if maybe the truth is
that the citizens of Willow Grove just make more time for whispers, winks, and
handshakes.
    Surely Norman Rockwell could capture this secret magic
of Willow Grove with a simple painting of an apple pie in an open windowsill or
of a small child riding in a wagon being pulled by a smaller child.  Or
perhaps Mr. Rockwell would have sat quietly in the corner of Brenda’s Hometown
Café and sketched weary-eyed men twinkling eye-smiles at each other over the
tops of tipped coffee cups that look too tiny and delicate for the hands that
hold them.  Hands that at six in the morning are already as dirty and rough as life on the farm.  Strong hands with thick
fingers that always made me feel small and dainty and quite lady-like thank you
very much, no matter my age