Thursday, March 21, 2013

A Memory of my daughter, and of myself.

Today, I came into the kitchen and saw Emilia on the far side, behind the table. Her head, or the top two inches of it at least, peered over the table's edge. She looked at me like "you better not come over here," or maybe it was "will you come over here?" I couldn't tell. Either way, she was too quiet. I walked across the room and around the table to discover that she was eating dirt. The dirt from the seedlings for my garden to be exact. Soil was smeared across her face and littered on the floor around her. My mustard green seedling had a considerable-sized hole in the center, dug by a small and chubby finger. I stood there a moment, and then I laughed. After a brief inner monologue deliberation, I let her swallow the dirt. Venturing my fingers into her mouth never ends good.

I wondered about God and how this had to have happened between the two of us. How many times have I crawled to the far side of the kitchen to get into something off limits. How many times did I peer up to see if God was watching, and what He would do, and He, looking down to see my mouth full of dirt.







“There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.” 
― Marilynne RobinsonHousekeeping