
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell them about the deer, but I ended up
not doing it.  That was one thing I kept to myself.  I've never spoken or
written of it until just now, today.  And I have to tell you that it seems
a lesser thing written down, damn near inconsequential.  But for me it was
the best part of that trip, the cleanest part, and it was a moment I found
myself returning to, almost helplessly, when there was trouble in my life --
my first day in the bush in Vietnam, and this fellow walked into the clearing
where we were with his hand over his nose and when he took his hand away there
was no nose there because it had been shot off; the time the doctor told us
our youngest son might be hydrocephalic (he turned out just to have an
oversized head, thank God); the long crazy weeks before my mother died.  I
would find my thoughts turning back to that morning, the scuffed suede of
her ears, the white flash of her tail.  But eight hundred million Red Chinese
don't give a shit, right?  The most important things are the hardest to say,
because words diminish them.  It's hard to make strangers care about the
good things in your life.
		-- Stephen King, "The Body"
