Books open on the dark, worn wood of the kitchen table Light in the kitchen cleaning the air doors open in the front and the back as the winter pretends spring and I research when to prune the apple tree and it isn't yet The slowness of a cold in the joints and curling up on the couch under the burnt orange afghan I made traveling over the Colorado plains one Christmas, the yarn looped over the rearview mirror a lifetime ago How I unraveled it, ten wound balls and crocheted it again with a tighter stitch last year when I was remaking myself and it took so much courage to undo everything And she is in Louisiana driving under trees draped with Spanish moss and seeing friends I miss now thinking of it, but this is the season for this story and I don't have to understand everything that seems like a loss or a rebuilding Plainsong and Little Heathens page turners as I remake the story as pictures in my mind and could it really be two years since I read a book straight through like those days when she was first born on the monitor and I held a book in one hand and her chest rising and falling in the other letting the days and pages turn until we were through it In a long time
I didn't see a single person So I played some songs and ate when I was hungry and slept when I was tired and at some point God asked me what active, consistent service looks like
And I was thinking that it might look a little like all of us treating the people and things God made the way God treats them Or at least attempting to with His guidance And when I was scared one night, I put my hands together and felt the same presence I did when I gave birth and it was beyond anything I could name But it held my life like a rose holds a bloom and will always do so like strong arms unwrapping us safely into the deep water we fought to avoid and suffered because of it until we let go and turned our faces into the air above us still warm from when God breathed it
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