Joe Mugnaini’s brilliant cover for the first edition of Ray Bradbury’s incendiary novel.
The book holds a special place in my heart for a couple reasons, on top of its timeless cautionary tale.
My daughter and I read it aloud together across many Saturday coffee-shop mornings when she was a young teenager, which was my first re-read of it in a good 20 years or so. What a wonderful way to be reacquainted.
And during our re-reading, I was profoundly moved by a passage late in the book when Montag, on the run, encounters a group of kindred spirits living in the woods on the outskirts of town. And around a campfire, he remembers his grandfather. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to this passage since.
Its still glowing embers warm me as much as the campfire that coaxed the words from Bradbury’s typewriter.
It’s not only been medicine to my heart, but I’ve shared Bradbury’s beautiful words with friends and kindred spirits seeking warmth in the darkness of their own loss.
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the (person) who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
Always makes me think of the gardeners I’ve known in my life.
In the slim chance you are unfamiliar with the reference, watch Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride, or — even better (trust me) — go read William Goldman’s novel on which the movie’s based.
“As you wish was all he ever said to her.
“That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying, ‘As you wish,’ what he meant was, ‘I love you.’”
The perfect choice for weekend chore work in service of one’s Buttercup.
I find that wearing this liberates me from having to say much, which thereby lessens my odds of saying something dumb, and/or something that will get on Buttercup’s nerves.
Left the house yesterday morning to meet my sister for coffee.
There are few more lovely reasons to leave the house on a Saturday morning.
Figured I’d swing by the post office first to pick up some stamps.
Planned to write my daughter her weekly postcard after having coffee with my big sister.
No line when I got inside.
Saw Maria standing behind the counter … which made me smile.
Maria’s worked at the post office for 28 years, if I remember correctly.
She told me last time I picked up a lasagna from her.
Not at the post office.
At her tender restaurant A la Maria’s, on LeMoyne, where she spends her weekday evenings … lovingly making her Mom’s old Italian recipes.
Maria’s place holds a special place in my heart.
When Karry and I got married and moved into the World’s Tiniest Apartment in East Washington, Maria’s mother ran a restaurant out of the basement of her home a couple blocks from us.
In our early Kraft-Mac-and-Cheese-Can-of-Peas-for-Dinner days, Paesano’s was our one monthly splurge.
Saturday night.
If the weather was nice we’d walk.
It was BYOB so we made a ritual of picking up a $10 bottle of wine.
Made sure we were in our seats by 7 o’clock, so we could watch X-Files re-runs on the big TV that hung in the dining area …
… while slow savoring food made with love from an Italian mother’s kitchen.
We’d take our time walking our full bellies back home — the next day’s leftover lunch in my left hand, Karry’s hand in my right.
Everything my Saturday night could ever want back then.
Maria’s lasagna is perfection.
Architectural is the best way to describe it.
Sharp corners. Rectilinear. Towering.
Don’t know how she does it.
Every lasagna we’ve ever made at home comes out of the pan (deliciously) gloopy.
Maria’s could serve as a tornado shelter.
Comes with about a 1/2 inch of standing red sauce pooling in the bottom of the to go container.
Every time I get home and crack open the styrofoam box, Pavarotti sings ‘La donna è mobile’ in my head.
Comes with two thin slices of Italian bread, essential sponges for sopping up every last drop from the plate when you’ve sadly run out of lasagna.
When I put my sopped-clean-post-lasagna plate in the dish washer, the other dishes are like, “I think you meant to put this back in the cabinet.”
So it should come as no surprise how it made me smile to see Maria behind the counter at the post office yesterday morning.
“Miss Maria,” I greeted.
“Mr. Riddell.”
“Postcard stamps?” I asked.
“Cleaned out. Election folks bought ‘em all up.”
“Awwww. Really?”
Asked her when they might get more in. She said they’re on order, from Kansas.
“They send them regular mail … so, who knows?”
Coming from a post office person, the “Who knows?” struck me as funny.
She said I could try the McMurray store. They have everything there.
I thanked her for letting me know, and exhaled defeatedly, as I didn’t have the time nor inclination for a special trip.
Was just about to say out loud that my visit wasn’t in vain, though, since I got to see her …
… when Maria interjected.
“Otherwise, you’d have to go two busses and some grapes.”
“Uh …. I’m sorry, what?”
“To make up the 61 cents,” she said.
Pre-caffeinated, I wasn’t following at all.
She pulls out her drawer, takes out a couple packs of stamps.
Starts to do math.
Explains the busses are 28 cents …
“So two of those …. plus a five cent stamp,” she says, holding up a pack of grape stamps.
“So you’d need a lot of stamps,” she chuckled.
“Wait …,” I said. “Postcard stamps are 61 cents?”
“Yep. Regular stamps are 78 cents, post cards are 61.”
I had no idea.
In my mind I thought postcard stamps were like 19 cents.
Sixty-one cents … for such little real estate.
I felt dumb … for having hundreds of post cards at home.
She started to put the booklets back in her drawer, when I interjected.
“I’ll take the busses and grapes,” I said.
“Oh, you want to do that?” she asked.
“Just to get me through today,” I said.
What I meant was that I’d just take a booklet of each as an interim solution.
“Oh, so you just want enough for one?” she asked.
I didn’t think you could do that.
I smiled at the smile on her face as I watched her tearing off a postcard’s worth of individual stamps from their booklets.
“I guess I’m going to have to write smaller,” I said out loud.
She broke apart the three I needed, laid them loose on the counter.
Then an idea popped into her head.
“Here’s what you do ….”
I watched her pick up a bus, peel it off, and carefully lay it across the other bus.
Wasn’t sure what she was doing … maybe just consolidating onto one piece rather than sending me out with three loose stamps?
Then she peeled the grape and surgically laid it across the second bus.
“There …. That’s what you do,” she said.
Proudly.
“Leaves you more room to write,” she said.
Oh.
“So you can lay them across each other like that on the post card?” I asked.
“Yep,” she said. “Only the ‘USA’ needs to be showing.”
And I giggled out loud … like a five-year-old who’d just seen an adult perform magic.
You should see what she does with a lasagna, I’m tellin’ ya.
In the town where I live, there’s a person who will not only let a clueless, pre-caffeinated little brother cobble together a postcard’s worth of stamps … but will take the time to bunch ‘em as tight as the law allows … so he has as much room as possible to write to his daughter about how much he misses her.
__
And after just the loveliest visit with my big sister …
… I took out my favorite pen …
… and the postcard I’d plucked special from my massive, impractical inventory …
… took my time writing small and neat …
… doing my best to make every word count …
… with all the reverence I could muster …
… as I imagined a mother might …
… writing down her favorite recipes for posterity.
Sunday morning I’m downstairs at my desk when my wife pulls in the driveway, back from picking up groceries after church.
She likes going to the early service.
I stay behind and write.
Both reverent in our pews, attentive to the divine.
Hearing the garage door, I walk out to help her carry in.
Find her sitting in her car, windows up.
“You on the phone?” I mouth, making a telephone gesture with my left hand.
She rolls down the passenger window.
“I wish you could see your Dad right now,” she says. “His boxers are sticking out above his pajama bottoms.”
She has our daughter on speaker.
“ ‘Thank you for helping carry in the groceries,’ is what she means to say,” I interject, loud enough for the bluetooth to pick up.
“And his t-shirt’s too small. Belly’s sticking out.”
I’m provoked into issuing a statement.
“I will not be shamed for operating in Cozy Mode on a Sunday morning,” I enter into the record.
“It’s almost noon,” my daughter chimes in on speaker.
I almost miss being a target of their pile-ons.
“And, let it be known that Cozy Mode may remain in effect for the next several hours,” I add, which is simultaneously the most defiant threat I can think of, and quite possibly the most pathetic utterance of my life.
“He looks ridiculous,” my wife adds, grossly overstating the obvious.
Or, overstating the gross obvious.
“OK, I’ll go in and change, and you can carry in the groceries,” I fire back.
Was pretty proud of that one. I’m usually not that quick.
“And I’ll take back the salami I picked up for you.”
She is always that quick.
Caught me flat-footed. I didn’t see the salami coming.
Night before, she’s putting finishing touches on the grocery order. Asks if there’s anything I want to add.
I think for a couple seconds. “Ooh … do we have any ….”
“Don’t even say ‘salami,’”
In legal terms I believe her asking me the question is what’s known as ‘entrapment,’ but I digress.
I braced a second too late for what I knew was coming next.
“I’ve thrown out the last three bags you asked me to get.”
This is true. Not sure I even opened ‘em.
“I’m not getting it again to have to throw it away.”
Totally understand. So wasteful.
I feel remorse for requesting salami that I habitually ignore.
I’m not sure why I do this.
I genuinely like salami. I mean, in between two slices of bread with some yellow mustard? Perfection. Makes salads instantly, you know, fancy. Rolled up with a slice of provolone … it’s like Cozy Mode on a plate.
I have it in my head that salami keeps for a long time. Takes weeks to cure, doesn’t it? You always see ‘em hanging from wooden ceilings on TV.
So I feel no sense of urgency with salami. Assume it’s always going to be there.
I’m surprised when she throws it away.
Every time she does, part of me thinks, “It’s still good.”
I realize I may not be in full command of the facts on the topic.
Maybe I should start treating it like an avocado.
Clock’s always tickin’ on an avocado. Doesn’t give you a chance to take it for granted.
Or … maybe I just like the idea of salami more than, you know, consuming it.
Regardless, the way she kiboshed my request before I could even make it the night before left me convinced I’d have a lot of time to ponder the mystery while living out the rest of my salami-free days.
A punishment fitting the crime.
But … she added it to the order.
Awwwww.
“She still loves me,” I thought.
At least enough to give me another chance.
I may or may not have placed my hand over my heart after she said it.
Or, you know, over my t-shirt that’s at least one size too small.
I mean, she got me salami.
I’ve come to appreciate that such tiny graces are the wobbly cobblestones that give a marriage a chance to find its fragile footing.
“It’s still good,” I thought.
The fact that I only became aware of her kind gesture when she threatened to take it back was not lost on me.
Clock’s always tickin’ on an avocado.
“We are such an old married couple,” I said, loud enough for the Bluetooth to hear.
For the record, I was praising us, not shaming us.
Love looks different at 54 then it did at 24.
Says the guy whose boxer shorts are peeking out over his drooping pajamas past noon on a Sunday.
Sometimes you have to put on your cheaters to notice how beautiful it still is.
Went for a walk over lunch the other day in the industrial park near our office.
Note to self — take more walks over lunch.
Figured I’d go 15 minutes out and double-back.
I followed the concrete sidewalk as far as the giant fenced cell tower behind one of the Mitsubishi buildings.
In the 20 years I’ve worked here, I’ve never gone farther than the big tower.
Was about to turn around … just as a person happened to be coming the other way, earbuds in.
“Excuse me,” I said.
Asked him where the rest of the trail goes.
“If you keep going straight through the woods, it comes to a park.”
Said he believed there might be a left and a right, too, but he’d never done those.
His response made me curious enough to break my routine and keep going.
Two minutes later I found myself under a fairy-tale-worthy canopy of trees … when I happened upon this.
The plastic bag’s what got me to stop.
And smile autonomically.
I can’t remember if I actually said, “Awww,” or … just felt it.
My heart immediately filled thinking of the tender deliberateness of whoever thought to take the photo.
And get it printed so small … at the perfect size to invite a closer look.
Then framed.
And come back … to give the world passing by … a reason to stop … and autonomically smile.
I wondered at what point the thoughtfulness occurred to put it in a plastic bag … to give it a chance against the elements.
Wondered if they brought the pup when they placed it.
Wondered if they said anything.
I wondered if they knew how much it might mean to a stranger out for a walk over lunch … to be reminded that such gentle souls exist in this world.
I just stood there for a few minutes … and danced with a million questions I will never know the answer to.
If the photographer knew Kyle.
Family maybe?
Kyle’s dog?
They go for walks here?
Or maybe it was a stranger who just noticed the bench and thought Kyle’s memory might want some company.
Considering the possibility that there might be such people in the world was enough for me.
Faith, hope and love … all wrapped up in a tiny plastic bag left loose on a bench.
I wished on the spot for it to remain there forever.
Though I knew it was just as likely that it might be gone by my next walk.
I’ll let you know.
Just in case … I wanted to wrap it all up … to protect it from the elements … and leave it here for you to stumble upon and smile … and wonder while the world passes.
Waking up, thinking of saints this Sunday morning.
Yesterday, Karry mentioned in passing that it would have been her Mom’s 90th birthday.
I confessed that over the past couple of days I found myself registering the month and days, sifting my brain as if there was a birthday I should be remembering, but coming up empty.
Betty passed way too early, at 71, from colon cancer. Can’t believe it’s been 19 years. Peter and Emma were so young.
There’s a photo we keep on the mantle in the dining room.
I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but I think it was the first time we visited her house after her passing.
I just remember it was a photo that demanded to be taken.
On the day I remember entering the house through the garage door (as we almost always did) … taking the stairs up to the main floor … and coming to the top of the steps.
Instinctively looking left.
When Peter was young and we’d visit, Gram would always leave a present for Peter in the window in the dining room.
Usually a little Matchbox car or truck.
Once loosed from the car, he’d tear up the steps, expectant … look left and make a beeline to the window to see what treasure she had left him.
She never forgot. He never even had to ask. Even when we’d show up unannounced, there was always something waiting for him in the window.
I always thought that the ritual of that was just the most perfect summing up of Karry’s mom.
While I hid my enthusiasms better than Peter, I always came up those steps, expectant, too.
You knew there would always be a simple kindness waiting for you.
A sweet tea.
An egg sandwich.
Something from the garden.
And, if it was Sunday, a feast for the ages.
Oh, how she threw down on Sundays.
On the day we visited after her passing, I remember looking left and seeing the window sill empty.
But instead of feeling the emptiness of that, I registered the sight of the sun’s morning rays blasting through the window, bathing the sill in the most wonderful light.
As if the heavens were conferring their eternal special blessing on that tender, sacred space.
It struck me in the moment, as it still does these 19 years later, as the perfect embodiment of Betty’s love and kindness.
The promise of a present always waiting in the window.
When Karry was pregnant with Emma, people would ask Peter, who was three at the time, whether he wanted a little brother or a little sister.
His answer was always the same.
“No.”
That one still cracks me up.
I mean, for a three-year-old … that’s a glorious comeback, right there.
And when I called Karry’s Mom from the hospital to let her know it was, in fact, a girl … and Betty, in turn, informed Peter (who she was watching while we were at the hospital), he made a beeline for the kitchen sink, climbed in the space underneath it, and shut the door behind him.
Years later, whenever people would ask me about our kids, I’d find myself saying, “My son’s ____ (16 … 18 … 20, etc.) , and he’s still getting used to the fact that he has a little sister.”
All of the above, true.
So … to be gathered around the table last night in our tiny dining room, surrounded by all our Christmas and life clutter …
… the four of us slow-savoring every bite of the by-request chocolate meringue flourless cake big brother made his little sister for her 20th birthday …
… listening to them geeking out with each other about the cake’s cross section …
… him sharing with her how the recipe’s author discovered how to do the marbling on top, and how he was meticulous in following the directions … for fear of all the inherent gluten-free and dairy-free landmines …
… how he’s never been one to follow directions … a proud by-product of the Fordyce stubborness he comes by honestly …
… getting to bear witness to a big brother’s pride in receiving his little sister’s approval.
Forgive me if it’s gonna take me awhile to get used to that fact.
I mean, that he wanted to get it just right for her.
Let’s just say … such sweetness is worth the wait.
Got up yesterday morning feeling … untethered. Outside, the sun was coming up on an unseasonably warm November day. The kind of sunshine we almost don’t deserve. I was feeling the heaviness of everything.
All the noise would soon be coming to its unnatural conclusion. I’d just poured my ritual 10 Tuesday ounces into my Thermos, but my cup still felt empty.
So I got in my car and drove towards the small coffee shop on North Main Street. The one where I like to write my daughter postcards on Saturdays. It’s quiet. One room. Handful of tables, small counter on which is perched a little clear case with baked goodies made by Nicole, one of the kind staff there. Reliably chill playlist.
I didn’t need a coffee. Just some humanity.
So, halfway up Main Street, I peeled off into the drive through at the bank. Got some cash from the machine. Humble pebbles for the scale, I told myself.
Got to the coffee shop right as it opened at 8. Parked across the street, and followed a woman in the front door. She was friends with the barrista on duty, and they dove right into easy conversation. Denise, the barrista, paused their conversation to wait on me. I ordered my cortado, paying with my Darth Vadar credit card. Added a small tip.
After placing my order, I asked Denise if they still did Pay It Forward. She nodded. I handed over what I’d withdrawn from the machine.
She thanked me, and I took a seat by the counter while she prepared my to go order.
When in walked a middle aged man in a ballcap. Kinda scruffy. Came in chatty.
Asked Denise, “What’s the strongest coffee you have?” He went on to say that he’d been nine years sober, mentioning the exact number of months and days for good measure. “So coffee’s a very important thing in my life.”
After Denise informed him of the dark roast of the day, he asked what sizes they had.
“How much is in a large?” he asked. Twenty ounces, she replied.
He asked her how much refills were. They’re free, Denise said.
From my chair I apprehended that maybe he didn’t have much on him. Probably didn’t have anywhere in particular to be. Interested in how far and for how long his dollars might stretch.
The stories we tell ourselves about the world around us.
He ordered his 20 ounces, asked her what he owed.
She told him not to worry about it.
“I’m sorry?” he said.
I tensed up a bit. I didn’t want to be around to watch anything.
I just came in to put a few pebbles on the scale and be on my way.
“It’s taken care of,” was all she said.
I exhaled.
“Wow,” he said. “Really? Um, thank you.”
He paused a beat.
“When I came in, I could tell that you had a really kind face.”
I smiled from my chair, because I think I said those exact words to Denise the last time I was in. It occurred to me that was also the day I dropped off my mail-in ballot at the county’s voter registration office.
I needed some humanity that day, too. Denise’s gesture unlocked his.
“You know, I was always a big egomaniac. I hurt a lot of people with my ego. But one of the biggest things they teach you is humility.
“A big part of learning humility is that receiving kindness is just as important as giving kindness. It’s not easy … but I’ve learned how to receive kindness.”
He asked Denise her name so he could thank her by it. Gave his in return.
Strong coffee in hand, he started to make his way to a table. Then he paused.
What he did next … I will never forget.
He turned back to Denise.
“Now I’m going to just have to find someone to pay your kindness forward,” he said.
He sees me sitting in my chair.
I met his gaze just in time to see his eyes alight.
“Can I buy you a coffee?” he asked me.
The best sermons are the ones you don’t see coming.
I thanked him profusely for giving me what I woke up needing from the world. What I’d hoped to find driving up Main Street not needing a coffee.
The way it came out was, “Already got one on the way. But, next time I see you, maybe we can have one together.”
He asked me my name. Gave his in return.
“God bless you, Pete,” he said.
“Backacha,” was all the lump in my throat would allow.
Pebbles on the scale.
Denise parked my cortado on the counter. I got up from my chair and met her at the register.
Exchanged fist bumps, and received the warmest smile from her kind face.
The kind of sunshine we most certainly deserve.
There are saints all around us. Most are hidden in plain sight. Sometimes they don’t look like you or me.
We need to humble ourselves to see them.
So we can receive their kindness.
So that when our own cups are empty, we can be reminded that refills are free.
When it came time for her to pick her final tap solo for her final dance recital, she didn’t agonize over the decision. Didn’t spend weeks trading, reviewing and debating dozens of tracks with her Mom and her instructor, like she’d always done with her competitive solos. As I recall, we were casually informed after she came home one day that she’d chosen Nat King Cole’s version of L-O-V-E.
“L – is foooor the way you … look at me ….”
When I overheard her telling her Mom, my heart leapt a little bit.
At the time, she didn’t know my mom just L-O-V-E’d all things Nat King Cole.
She didn’t know that L-O-V-E was probably my favorite tune when I played drums in Sammy Bill’s band … when I was an 18-year-old old soul like she is now.
She didn’t know that, whenever Sam used to call that tune – I still remember it was #252 in his book — I used to audibly enthuse, which the rest of the band always got a kick out of.
She didn’t know that Dad loved playing that tune, too.
She didn’t know that, even though the arrangement we played was pretty vanilla, Dad, if he was havin’ a good night, would improvise some of those ornery trumpet riffs behind our vocalist on the second verse, just like Nat’s version.
She didn’t know that, when it came time for me to walk away from playing after 14 years, that I somehow managed to talk Karry into us taking dance lessons so I could surprise my Dad by showing up at one of his gigs to dance to the music I had loved so much. He was over the moon when he saw us walk in, and I’m not sure who had the better time that night. All I remember is that we used every step in our meager repertoire, dancing our hearts out while he blew his horn from his shoetops.
She didn’t know that I made one request that night — #252 in the books.
At the time I didn’t know that, years later, she would be saying goodbye to something she loved so much.
I didn’t know that, after her 14 years of being on stage, she would know exactly how to put a bow on her closing chapter.
I didn’t know that she would make one request … #252 in the books.
So, after all those years of watching her with a lump in my throat and a pit in my stomach from my seat in the very last row, I got to stand in the wings for the very first time … and see her walk on stage for one of her very last.
Got to watch and listen to her dance her heart out as she sounded the stage from her shoetops one more time.
I didn’t know she was going to turn to me and smile the way she did.
“L – is foooor the way you … look at me ….”
And she didn’t know as I was tearing up and beaming back at her that I was thinking of Mom while Nate King Cole crooned. And hearing my Dad as that ornery trumpet riffed behind the vocal. And thinking of Karry as I walked on stage and took a beautiful young lady in my arms again.
Going through mail late Wednesday night after a long week of long travel, I noticed a letter from a friend, a single rose amongst all the junk mail. Rather than opening it on the spot, I made plans to save it until Saturday morning, where I might savor it at the coffee shop down the road, where our friendship was born a handful of years ago. Lately, I’ve tried to make a point of giving myself things to look forward to. When it works well, my Saturday mornings become sacred spaces, a chance to replenish some measure of all the week’s taxes.
Yesterday, though, had a few plot twists that kept me from filling my cup, both figuratively and literally. It was well past 1 p.m. and I found myself driving around after running a couple errands. Robbed of my ritual, my head was not in the best of spaces. The coffee shop closes at 1:30 on Saturdays, so I’d missed my window.
I was about to return home, where I’d probably grumpily wallow through the rest of a ruined Saturday, when I remembered I still had the unopened letter in my bag. On a whim I navigated to the Eat n’ Park off Oak Springs Road, which I hadn’t visited in years, but which was in heavy rotation when the kids were younger. Pulling into an open parking spot triggered a memory of an Eat n’ Park Saturday long past, when Peter, maybe 9 at the time, attempted to order a Boys’ Day-Out lunch consisting of mashed potatoes, a baked potato, french fries and potato chips. I remember telling him at that time that if his mother was with us, she would stab him in the eye with a fork.
I wasn’t really hungry, and I’d already had the morning’s coffee, but the idea of a big table and a comfy booth sounded … comforting for some reason.
The hostess seated me near the front.
So, hours late, off schedule and way off course, I exhaled from my comfy booth and fished the letter from my bag.
Though deep into his 80’s, my friend Jim writes his letters with a calligrapher’s hand (though he saves his best penmanship for his poems).
As one whose handwriting has degraded so much that I have long resorted to typing my letters (though I try salvaging a measure of dignity by choosing a typewriter font … lame, I know), I delight in reading the hand of others. Tearing open the letter, I pluck just a brief note from my friend. Letting me know that the timing of my last letter to him was of great encouragement, as he received it on the day of his wife Mary’s passing. He had only months ago placed her in a personal care facility, after caring for her for years and through the Pandemic as she slipped further into dementia. In his last letter to me he wrote unflinchingly, achingly but beautifully about being physically separated from his wife for the first time in their 66 years of marriage. A minister and former Army chaplain during his long full life, Jim always writes mindful of God’s audience, which begs an even greater reverence from his fortunate reader.
He closed his short note by sharing that his final Valentine’s gift to Mary was a new book of poems he’d written over the past three years, finished several days before she passed. The title: The Road Bends Upwards (those four words a poem unto themselves).
He wrote in my letter that Mary chuckled when he read the collection’s dedication to her over the phone …
Duck your head
Close your eyes
Take my hand
And we will walk this road
One more time
Together
My eyes filled as I read his words.
The ineffability of the inevitable disassembling of a long love on this earth. And still the poet reaches for the only tool he knows to claim the shaky ground beneath him. Knowing the effort will come nowhere close to its mark. Just as any long love misses as much as it aims at. Grief rendered in all its aching beauty.
Yes to that.
I still held Jim’s note in my hand when the server stopped by my table to take my order. I somehow managed to mumble an order without my voice catching and then just sat there.
A few minutes later my server brought me my sandwich. I began mindlessly picking at it.
From my booth near the front, I faced the hostess station, so got to see everyone who came in.
I was maybe midway through my sandwich when I looked up and saw an older couple being led to their table. They had to be in their 70s, maybe older (I’ve never tried to be good at guessing such things). They cut quite a contrasting presence. He was bald, tall and broad. She was his diminutive opposite, short, petite with a shock of straight gray. Candidly, though, I may not have given them a second thought, still so deep and lost in my figurative and literal sitting with the contents of Jim’s letter … if it wasn’t for one thing that caught my eye.
They held hands.
And took their good time in no great hurry. Heads high, looking forward, not saying a word as they followed the hostess in front of them.
The way they held each other’s hand, in their mismatched nylon coats, I swear to God they walked the worn carpet of our old Eat n’ Park like they were walking down the aisle of a church.
As if they hadn’t lost a step in probably the 50 years that passed since their I dos.
It was like, in each other’s hand, they were reaching for the only tool they knew to claim the shaky ground beneath them.
Yes to that.
Thanks to Jim’s friendship, his letter, his example, I found myself mindful of God’s audience. How else could I account for choosing to wait to open his letter until Saturday? My careful Saturday morning plans blowing up? Finding myself at an Eat n’ Park I hadn’t visited in years to crack open his beautiful letter? Looking up from my front row seat to catch the fleeting glimpse of an old love still standing the test of time?
And in the process … giving me something to look forward to … well beyond the end of any week.
So, in between bites of my turkey club, I claimed the shaky ground beneath me, to honor my friend and his beloved.
To stab at the ineffable, knowing going in that the effort would come nowhere close to its mark.
Love misses as much as it aims at.
And, before I gathered my things and myself to return to whatever was left of my Saturday, I asked for the check of the happy old couple seated at their wedding table near the salad bar.
For Mary and Jim
Sun finds me sitting alone at a big booth near the front
Letters for Maggie 