Small Things

Letter from Mary to John

I wonder if we’d recognize each other now? It’s not the graying but the way gravity takes hold of the face’s finest parts. This morning it seems this pale wash of sunlight on my kitchen walls barely made it through the winter. I expect you’ve been happy these years; that was your great gift, to gather goodness around you.

I never moved to the big city to teach piano. Still play for the choir, never lost my love for Bach. Not a sad life, though more modest than I’d imagined. I’ve had to find the largeness of the world in small things. There’s a time we think we have several lives ahead of us, never one choice cancelling another. It’s true I regret not choosing you. I told myself I was afraid I couldn’t be myself in your world.

I’ve a son, yes, a professor at the nearby university. He’s a kind man, thoughtful, as you’d expect, soon to be married. No, I never married. I suppose all this surprises you. I think about the nature of this world and the next; if it’s meant to be, it will be. I look into the night sky or the depths of my old maple for comfort from a god who never seemed to rest a hand on my head. More like someone watching me from a distance and knows I’ll get there.

Remember those summer nights on the hill when we lay on the grass and talked about space and time, the mystery of our being here at all, let alone with each other? Now that so much time has passed, my heart’s no longer weighed down by the anchor of longing. I’d like to know how you are, that you are well and your life’s come to some good.

My sister who loves all things Egyptian once asked me what I would take into the next world. I think it would be the memory of those nights, the darkness and our words. I’d compare what we thought with the real thing, and see if we were right.

This Day

A boy sits in the barn in the dark, the lantern lugged into the night laid just so, to milk by. He rests his head against her warm and pungent side. Up and down, his fingers knead and pull. The white streams rush out like all that’s good in the world.

Iowa, 1944. He’s blessed by parentage and place and who he is. His mind’s eye spirals up past hawkweed, stones, fox in the henhouse, his mother’s clear blue eyes; dreams galaxies and God. Soon he’ll walk back to the house to drink the one cup of coffee he’s allowed, then it’s off to school.

Just before dawn, he nears the house where the first breeze lifts the maple’s black leaves. He feels a quiet thrilling in the midst of a generous calm he’ll carry all his life: this day—its dark, its voices calling from the kitchen door, open, lit—begins again.