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Lisa sat on the floor of her old room, staring at the box that lay in front of her. It was an old shoe box that she had decorated to become a memory box many years before. Stickers and penciled flowers covered the top and sides. Its edges were worn, the corners of the lid taped so as to keep their shape. It had been three years since Lisa last opened the box. A sudden move to Boston had kept her from packing it. But now that she was back home, she took the time to look again at the memories. Fingering the corners of the box and stroking its cover, Lisa pictured in her mind what was inside. There was a photo of the family trip to the Grand Canyon, a note from her friend telling her that Nick Bicotti liked her, and the Indian arrowhead she had found while on her senior class trip. One by one, she remembered the items in the box, lingering over the sweetest, until she came to the last and only painful memory. She knew what it looked like--a single sheet of paper upon which lines had been drawn to form boxes, 490 of them to be exact. And each box contained a check mark, one for each time. ******** Lisa's Sunday school teacher had read Jesus' surprise answer to the class. "Seventy times seven." Lisa had leaned over to her brother Brent as the teacher continued reading. "How many times is that?" she whispered. Brent, though two years younger, was smarter than she was. "Four hundred and ninety," Brent wrote on the corner of his Sunday school paper. Lisa saw the message, nodded, and sat back
in her chair. She watched her brother as the lesson continued.
He was small for his age, with narrow shoulders and short
arms. His glasses were too large for his face, and his hair
always matted in swirls. He bordered on being a nerd, but
his incredible skills at everything, especially music, made
him popular with his classmates. Brent had learned to play
the piano at age four, the clarinet at age seven, and had
just begun to play the oboe. His music teachers said he'd
be a famous musician someday. There was only one thing at
which Lisa was better than Brent--basketball. They played
it almost every afternoon after school. Brent could have
refused to play, but he knew that it was Lisa's only joy
in the midst of her struggles to get C's and D's at school. "It's all right. I forgive you,"
he said. "You know . . . what we learned in Sunday
school today. You're supposed to forgive someone 490 times.
I just forgave you, so now you have 489 left," he kidded.
The two of them laughed at the thought of keeping track
of every time Lisa had done something to Brent. They were
sure she had gone past 490 long ago. The rain interrupted
their game, and the two moved indoors. "Wanna play
Battleship?" Lisa asked. Brent agreed, and they were
soon on the floor of the living room with their game boards
in front of them. Each took turns calling out a letter and
number combination, hoping to hit each other's ships. Lisa
knew she was in trouble as the game went on. Brent had only
lost one ship out of five. Lisa had lost three. Desperate
to win, she found herself leaning over the edge of Brent's
barrier ever so slightly. She was thus able to see where
Brent had placed two of his ships. She quickly evened the
score. "Okay, I forgive you," Brent said.
Then he added with a small laugh, "I guess it's down
to 488 now, huh?"
Brent's forgiving spirit gripped Lisa, and
she wanted him to know how sorry she was. It was that evening
that she made the chart with the 490 boxes. She showed it
to him before he went to bed. "We can keep track of
every time I mess up and you forgive me," she said.
"See, I'll put a check in each box--like this."
She placed two marks in the upper left-hand boxes. "These
are for today."
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