homage

Before I tell you what happened between 5:30 and 6:30 tonight, I’ll tell you that I spent the day talking with a man afraid he’s losing his marriage, another man wracked by guilt at the damage he’s done to his marriage, a couple wondering if they can keep living with their extreme differences, a man whose mother died this week, and a couple living with an incurable cancer, and that I care deeply about every one of those people.

At 5:30 I called my brother- and sister-in-law’s house. They live a few hundred yards up the hill. Jeanine was out for the evening, and I felt in need of company.

“Ruffellllll!” This is how my niece Joy answers the phone when I call. The phone company misunderstood me when I signed up for service – I said “R-U-S-S-E-L-L,” but they heard, “R-U-F-F-E-L-L” – so that’s what comes up on caller ID if I call, and that’s how Joy answers.

“Joyotaaaaaaa!” That’s what I call Joy. “What y’all doing?”

“We’re having family time. You should come up.”

“Then I will.”

The gravel road from our house to theirs passes a pasture. There are two cows, a black one named Molly, a brown one named Annie. Beyond the pasture is a mountainside, and this evening it was on fire with the colors of October: yellows, reds, greenish yellows, reddish browns, brownish reds. The late afternoon sun was low behind me. I hate to say the light was perfect, but it was.

I walked in the back door, into the kitchen. My sister-in-law Kiran kissed me on the cheek. She poured a couple glasses of homemade kombucha, and we talked a minute. She was still in her work clothes. “Joy’s upstairs in her room. She wants us all to come up and snuggle. I’m gonna change, then I’ll see you up there.”

I took a kombucha up to Joy. She was nestled in beneath her comforter, and I lay down beside her.

“You know your room looks like a sixteen-year old lives in it, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

We listened to music on her phone. She played me the opening song of her current favorite musical (“Hamilton”), and I played her one of my favorite songs from spin class (“Expensive,” by Tori Kelly). Her mom came up and got on the bed, too. We listened to more music.

There’s a river birch just outside her window, and beyond it more pasture and mountain. The light was still perfect. The tree was golden.

On the window sill is a wooden block I painted a few years ago for Christmas. It’s a picture of a small blue bird against a red and yellow background. On the back it says, “Put a little birdhouse in your soul.”

I asked where Mark was. Mark is my brother-in-law.

“You didn’t see him when you walked up?”

“No.”

“He was doing something in the yard. You must have just missed him. He’ll be in in a few.”

And right on cue, I heard the sound of a guitar. Mark is probably my favorite guitarist in all the world, not because he’s the world’s greatest guitarist, but because the way he plays is such an extension of himself. He was playing as he climbed the stairs. He walked into the room, kept playing, and began singing. He was singing an Andy Gullahorn song called “Burning Bushes.” The chorus goes like this:

 “I’m praying for a miracle to let me know you’re listening

Waiting for a lightning bolt to strike

Walking through a garden of a thousand burning bushes

Looking up to heaven for a sign.” 

We listened to more music. We talked. And laughed. Mark and Kiran had to go milk goats, and I had to go home. We left Joy in her room.

I got outside and realized I’d left my coat upstairs. I ran back up.

“Forgot my coat.”

“Ah.”

“Bye, Joy.”

“Bye, Ruffell. I love you.”

And I felt, I knew, she was speaking for more than just herself.

All of this — this day of loss and ache and love, this hour of light and song and love –reminds me of a poem by Rumi:

       “If God said, ‘Rumi, pay homage

       to everything that has helped you enter my arms,’

       there would not be one experience of my life,

       not one thought, not one feeling, not any act,

       I would not bow to.”

And so, at the end of this day, I bow.