In the Presence of…

I imagined myself at seventy-three.

Twenty years from now.

I thought perhaps she would have answers.

That age might have settled something in her
I am still learning how to hold.

I thought she might tell me
what mattered in the end.

What was worth keeping.
What should have been released sooner.
What all this wondering had finally taught her.

Instead,

she laughed at me.

Not cruelly.

The kind of laugh
that made me realize
I had arrived carrying questions
she no longer felt required to answer.

She was not finished.

That was the first thing
she wanted me to understand.

Seventy-three was not an ending.

She was still curious.

Still wandering toward things
simply because she wanted
to know what was there.

Still looking into corners.

Still traveling
not because there was somewhere
she needed to arrive,

but because there were places
she had not yet stood.

She still interrupted conversations
for butterflies.

Of course she did.

A butterfly could cross her path
mid-sentence,

and whatever important thing
she had been saying
would simply have to wait.

There was a butterfly.

And she was still the kind of woman
who said hello.

I was relieved by that.

Relieved that wonder
had survived her knowing.

That all those years
had not taught her
to stop being astonished.

She still broke cookies in half
when someone sat beside her.

Not because half was enough.

Because sharing had always been
one of the ways she understood love.

And when I asked her
if she still wanted the whole sky,

she looked at me
as though I had asked
the most ridiculous question.

Of course she did.

The whole damn sky.

Not to possess it.

Not even to reach it.

She simply had not mistaken
contentment for the end of desire.

She could be grateful
for where her feet were

and still turn her face
toward something beautiful.

There was no contradiction in that.

By then, perhaps,
she understood something
I am only beginning to understand now:

there is a difference
between reaching for life

and being available to it.

She was not reaching.

She was receiving.

Whatever was, was.

Whatever became, became.

She trusted that what was hers
would find its way into her hands,

and what was not
did not need to be wrestled
into becoming so.

I asked her if she had done enough.

She laughed again.

There I was,

still trying to measure a life.

As though enough
could be counted.

As though joy kept records.

As though a life needed
to defend its existence
with a list of accomplishments.

She did not tell me
she had done everything.

I don't think she cared anymore
whether she had.

She had loved.

She had grieved.

She had wandered.

She had been frightened
and gone anyway.

She had known disappointment.

She had known delight.

She had stood beneath skies
that made her forget
whatever question
she had been asking.

She had followed curiosity
into places she could not
have planned for herself.

She had looked for happiness
in every nook and cranny
where it might be hiding.

And when she found it,

she had let herself have it.

She had known love.

Joy.

Peace.

Wonder.

And all the good things
God designed this life
to hold.

Not perfectly.

Not without sorrow.

But fully enough
to know that sorrow
had never been proof
that life was withholding
its goodness.

I looked at her then,

this woman I had gone searching for
because I thought twenty more years
might turn me into someone wiser,

someone more certain,

someone finished.

But she was not finished.

Thank God.

She was still becoming.

Still curious.

Still willing to be surprised.

Still breaking cookies in half.

Still saying hello to butterflies.

Still wanting
the whole damn sky.

And I realized
I had not found an old woman
waiting at the end of my questions.

I had found the little girl
still living inside them.

As long as God grants me
another day
with breath in my soul,

then there is still
something here
to experience,

to love,

to wonder.

To be in the presence of…

With Grace & Ink,
Mai