I Command Thee

She had no idea why, other than that she was a creature of habit whose body rebelled when habit was out of alignment. It was a downright nuisance, a real bother, an inconvenience of fairly important dimensions. After all, regularity of elimination of body waste is an important yardstick of health. To feel at one's physical optimum such matters are vital. Yet, year after year the same thing happened.

She refused to "take" anything to speed the process, preferring to wait out her body's rebellion in a belated return to normalcy. Call her stubborn; her husband certainly did from time to time, urging various types of remedies on her. One year she stuck a bottle of prune juice on their vacation shopping list when they settled into the rented cottage and stocked up at the local supermarket. Happened it was a hot week in late June, and they had done more than the usual mountain hikes. After two days of gulping down cold prune juice her bowels had rebelled furiously and painfully. Causing them to lose out on a day of hiking. Besides which, she was too fearful of getting caught out on a remote peak, eliminating waste.

That was 'way back then, when they still climbed mountains. Now, they manage relatively tame hikes with not too much of an ascending gradient. So, this year, as with all others, she faced the usual struggle, hoping her alimentary system would grumpily decide to function before the week was entirely out. And she waited.

Her husband, anxious for her well-being and comfort, insisted on a daily progress report. Nothing to report. They ran through their old familiar beloved treks day by day, until only the Basin Cascades trail at the Notch was left. They parked their Ontario-licensed truck among a sea of New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts licenses, exited the parking lot to amble through the damp concrete tunnel under the highway bridge leading to the Basin entrance.

When their now-fifty-plus-year-old children were young pre-teens they used to shout, clap, chant, growl and cheer, to hear the deep echoes the tunnel would creepily throw back at them, sending them into howls of side-splitting laughter. Hanna turned in mock surprise as she heard her husband's baritone try out a few vowels for effect, each one magnified, bouncing off the old, damply cold

walls of the tunnel.

And then, she heard in a rich full tone of authority (omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent) a sentence that convulsed her with appreciation for her husband's wit.

"Han-nah!", the aas rolling deep and thunderously magnificent: "This is the voice of God. I command you to poop!"