In Mourning into Dancing, Walter Wangerin tells an event in his childhood. He said he always told people that his daddy was stronger than anyone else in the world. Now, in those childhood days, a cherry tree grew in their back yard, and it was Walter's favorite hiding place. Ten feet above the ground there was a stout limb that made a horizontal fork, a cradle in which he could like face down, reading, thinking, being alone. Nobody bothered him there. Even his parents didn't know where he went to hide. Sometimes Dad would come out and call, "Wally? Wally?" but wouldn't see him hidden among the leaves. "I felt very tricky," Wangerin recalls.
But one day a wind tore through their backyard and hit the tree with such force that it tore the book Wally was reading from his hands and threw him from his limb. Hear the story as he tells it.
Then came the thunderstorm ... It was usual for me to dream in my tree and therefore not to notice changes in the weather. So if the sky grew dark or gave any warning, I didn't see it. [When the wind threw me from my limb] I locked my arms around the forking branches and hung on. My head hung down between them. I tried to wind my legs around the limb, but the whole tree was wallowing in the wind.
"Daddy!" As the wind blew he felt his arms were going to slip from the branches.
"Daddeeeee!"
Daddy saw me, and right away he came out into the wind and weather, and I felt so relieved because I just took it for granted that he would climb up the tree to get me. But that wasn't his plan at all. He came to a spot right below me and lifted his arms and shouted, "Jump!"
"What?"
"Jump, I'll catch you."
I screamed, "No!"
But as the wind continued to blow, he changed his mind. He let go.
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In a fast eternal moment I despaired and I plummeted. 'This,' I thought, 'is what it is like to die!'
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But my father's arms caught me.
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Oh, my daddy -- he had strong arms indeed. Very strong arms. But it wasn't until I actually experienced the strength that I also believed in it.
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