Emry, October 2014
This is what the living do. We want and want and want some more, and then we are suddenly satiated, and this is grace.
Riding my bike through the autumn morning, the piles of leaves damp from a little nighttime rain, or maybe it was heavy dew, the sky a brightening blue with strewn white cloud over it. A sky like that has promise. The way the light slants past the street signs, hitting the tops of the trees and letting them show off their yellows, their dusty oranges.
“Look, Mama! A jack-lantern!” cries the little voice from the bike trailer behind me, and I have to stop myself from looking around too closely to see what he sees.
After all, I’m a moving vehicle.
After all, there are cars on the road.
After all, I am aware – probably too aware these days – that grace an be shattered in an instant, and often is. Usually by mundane details – the sudden realization that the Lego guy has lost his hand and where is it? The sound of my phone ringing from my purse inside the bike pannier, the wonder who and what it is. The bringing up of the mental to do list, the mind hopping away from this moment – October morning, persimmons heavy on the tree we’ve just passed under, cat staring out the window like a Halloween decoration, voice calling to me from the trailer, “Remember Mama? Remember when we saw the jack-lanterns?” with awe, with reverence.
He – with his tangled and dreadlocked hair, desperately in need of a wash, comb and bang trim, if not (some say certainly yes) in need of an entire real haircut, his will-be first – he knows grace when he sees it.
He, with the curve of his tummy showing under most of the shirts he allows me to put on him.
He, with the pants too short and the socks pulled up over small, still-soft feet.
He, who I describe as “doughy,” as in “doughy arms, let me kiss them,” that soft still-babyishness to his limbs and cheeks and chin, everyday growing and lengthening and strengthening, but still, for now, doughy. He’s chubbier than he’s been in years. “Gordito está,” Justina said when she saw him for the first time in a while, squeezing him in delight.
He, who is now four years old.
He, who feels solid. Eating a whole cheese roll from the Cheeseboard, rich and chewy with cheese, in the stroller on the way home from preschool.
He, who was so delighted when I told him Paulette, one of his preschool teachers, was coming over to babysit.
And me, kissing and hugging him and leaving to ride my bike through the October morning once again. Feeling the luxury of a babysitter, the cleansing of worry by the air, by the motion, by the way the cars moved aside and away and the whole way was downhill, just swooshing along, coasting, not pedaling, no hard work involved, no rush, no hurry, no parking spot to find.
Just grace, and the air on my face.
Just grace, and a thermos of coffee in the pannier waiting, a promise.
Just this moment.
October.
Grace.
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Inspired by Marie Howe’s poem “What the Living Do”
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