Tender Grace (22 page)
After taking care of her two children, she made a call to her sister, who began a chain of calls. “Tell everyone to pray for Vernon,” she said before disconnecting.
We sat on the stone bench after she slid her cell phone into a pocket of her jacket.
“I’ve been praying for Vernon,” I said, “and you too.”
“I appreciate that so much,” she said, patting my hand.
For the most part, we alternated between sitting in the waiting room and walking the corridors. After a couple of hours, we broke up the routine by making a trip to the cafeteria for some caffeine, coffee for Liz and a Diet Coke for me, and we drank it on a patio, swapping stories about Vernon and Tom. I did not plan on mentioning Tom’s heart attack—what could be less appropriate? But conversation took us there, and she probed until I told her about finding him that dreadful morning.
“Audrey!” Liz said. “I’m so sorry!”
“I am too. But Vernon’s getting help in time, and that makes me happy.”
“I guess you know,” she said, standing up and throwing her cup in the trash. “I don’t know how I would have made it through this day if you hadn’t been here. How can I ever thank you?”
“Being here has been my privilege and pleasure, and thanking me couldn’t be less necessary.”
“But I thank you anyway.”
I stayed with Liz until her daughter arrived and Vernon was out of surgery. Few things have cheered my heart more than seeing Vernon’s surgeon come striding through the door with a smile on his face. How happy I was that it was not time for Liz to stand by her husband’s graveside.
Arriving back at the hotel, I still had time to take a walk. I grabbed Tom’s Bible and found a place to watch the sunset, wondering if Tom had stopped near there to watch the sun in the same setting. The anniversary card marked the section of John called “Palm Sunday.” When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a young donkey, the people who had heard about his raising Lazarus from the dead greeted him with palm branches, symbols of victory, and called out, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
As I thought about the relief that flooded Liz’s face when the doctor told her the surgery had gone well that afternoon, I looked up to see the orange sun, huge and iridescent, hanging over the horizon.
“Wait a minute,” I said. I got up and scurried about collecting palm branches I had seen strewn along the beach, making a mound of them.
“There,” I said when I had finished.
I sat beside my altar of palm branches and watched the sun drop from sight, streaking the sky with glorious pinks and the deep purple of royalty.
September 19
San Juan Capistrano isn’t far from San Diego, so I spent my afternoon visiting the mission there. The swallows and the song about them are the sole reason for this day trip. How can I possibly remember the song “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano”? Was it on
Your Hit Parade
when I was a little girl and Mom rolled my hair in front of the television set? Pat Boone had a version. I suppose that’s the one I remember.
People call it the jewel of the California missions. I was sick to hear that it was once a huge church with seven domes and that an earthquake had destroyed most of it only a few years after it was completed in the 1700s. And as it turns out, the birds haven’t come in huge numbers to build their mud nests in the ruins of this wonderful stone church for a long time, since the early 1900s, according to a lady at the mission.
But though it isn’t what it was, I found this place peaceful and enchanting. I loved the remaining walls with bougainvillea draping them, the wall of bells, the fountain, the chapel. I was sitting on a low wall enjoying the fountain when I observed a little bird flitting about and wondered if he was one of the swallows that had flown over from Argentina last spring. They still come to this area of Southern California, created to do so it seems, and a few nests appear now and then among these ruins. Whether I saw a swallow or not, I’m glad the romantic notion of the returning swallows brought me to this place.
I have come to understand that tender graces remain for those who can see. The Mission San Juan Capistrano is one. And I’m happy to say I saw it.
On the way back to the island, I pulled into a large shopping area to pick up something to eat. Rather than driving to the restaurant, I turned, with no premeditation whatsoever, into a parking space at one of my favorite bookstores. It seems like years since I’ve spent time in a bookstore, and I found myself walking down row after row of books, pulling out one here and there, and spending even more time perusing books on display tables. I picked up several, drawn by their quirky titles, and read the backs, thinking I might buy one. But in the end, I wasn’t in the mood for cute, witty, or satirical.
I did, however, leave with a book. Why it got my attention, I can’t say. It certainly didn’t have an interesting cover, though plain and brown is as inviting to me as anything else these days. If I’m going to attempt reading again, books other than my Bible, that is, I thought this Pulitzer Prize–winning book might be a good one to start with. I was drawn to the simple title:
Acts of Faith.
I almost put it down when I read on the back cover that it was set in the Sudan—one recent and horrific example of a fallen world. And besides that, by today’s standards, it was a tome (any book that has to list major and minor characters, along with a brief description of each, is a little intimidating). But something kept it in my hand. If it’s too much once I open it beyond the first pages and actually start reading seriously, I know Molly will be glad to have it, and my purchase won’t have been in vain. I might even start it tomorrow, which could cut my television viewing to practically nothing.
What have I done?
September 20
I made a quick stop by the hospital on my way out of town, to check on Vernon and to give Liz my e-mail address for updates, and have arrived safely in Santa Barbara. After getting situated, I opened my laptop and found a message from Willa. She wrote to tell me about a series of
Oprah
programs dedicated to a cross-country trip Oprah took with her best friend, Gayle. Willa said they were “seeing the USA in a Chevrolet,” beginning in L.A. and ending in New York. She ended her message by saying that Oprah had the good sense to take her best friend with her when she took a road trip. As a closure, she wrote, “Repent!” She didn’t even sign her name.
I wrote back and said I would wager there were times on Oprah’s trip across the country when either she or Gayle had been the ones repenting.
Solitude has its merits.
As does fellowship, of course, and once again, I promised Willa a trip to a destination of her choice in the next year or two.
Mainly I wrote to thank her for her sweet gift. I found it yesterday, tucked in the front zipper of my shoe bag. She had taped a note on the plastic cover that said as soon as I was ready to listen to music, she wanted me to hear song ten on this Selah CD. She said she had been drawn to the CD because of its title:
Bless the Broken Road
.
“How perfect is that?” she wrote. She said she brought it home and listened to it and decided to give it to me because of song ten. “If anything sounds like you, this song is it.”
After I packed the car this morning, I put the disk into my CD player. Just before I pulled onto Highway 1, I found track ten and played and replayed “The Faithful One” for at least thirty minutes, pulling over once to reach into the glove compartment for tissues. How well Willa knows me! I love the song. Tom and I had our song. I believe that this will be my song without him and that this was the perfect day for it to come to me: “With feet unsure I still keep pressing on, for I am guided by the faithful one.”
I reread her note when I got to the hotel today and had to laugh at a PS I had overlooked earlier: “Please note that someone named Eaton co-wrote the song. Is that not a sign you will love it?!”
I’m going to watch
Dancing With the Stars
and then turn off the television and read another chapter of my novel. I read the eight-page introduction and reviewed the cast of characters after dinner this evening. I’ll say this: It is not light reading.
September 21
I saw him first at the top of Santa Cruz Island.
I had read about the Channel Islands in my hotel room, but that doesn’t adequately explain why I actually took the boat to Santa Cruz. I could have stayed in Santa Barbara and perused quaint shops, or visited galleries, or enjoyed another botanical garden. I haven’t done any of those things for a while now, but instead I chose to do something I have never done. I almost regretted my decision on the hour boat ride to the island. While everyone else was buying coffee and hot chocolate and doughnuts, I was discreetly inquiring about a barf bag. That, by the way, is exactly what I called it. A more proper name for it eludes me even now. The girl behind the counter found me a Ziploc bag, and I headed for the deck at the back of the boat, where the fresh air, despite the chill and the wind, relieved my nausea enough that I could stuff the unused bag in my pocket for the return trip.
I couldn’t have been happier to see shore.
As soon as I got off the boat and the other passengers scattered, leaving me alone on the pebbled beach, I looked up at the “mountain” I intended to climb and congratulated myself on a good decision. Before I boarded the boat this morning, and after weeks of needing one, I broke down and bought a backpack for this particular adventure; my trusty canvas bag could not cut exploring a deserted island. And the island really did seem deserted. I couldn’t imagine how everyone could have completely disappeared five minutes after disembarking. I slipped my arms into the straps of my backpack and began walking to a path that I assumed would lead to a trail.
My assumption was correct, and I did pretty well on the trail, though several times I thought how much easier the climb would’ve been if Tom had been there to take my hand and pull me up when the trail was steep and footholds too sparse. Instead I used my hands to pull myself up, like a kid climbing a rock wall, only I was a tad more horizontal. I was thankful I didn’t have my canvas bag slung over my shoulder. It wasn’t a horrible trail, but it wasn’t all that easy either, especially for a wimpy woman climbing alone. I broke a nail, which I ignored though I had a file in my backpack, and I was forced to sit and rest a few times, but I was determined to get to the summit. This was my Mount Everest. When I finally reached the top, I considered doing a victory dance with my fists in the air like Rocky. I squelched the impulse when I saw a rather handsome man striding toward me, apparently heading back down the trail from which I had come.
“You made it,” he said.
I slid the backpack off my shoulders. “To the top, anyway.”
“The view is worth your trouble.”
“That’s good to know,” I said, lifting what looked like a piece of straw out of his shiny brown hair and handing it to him.
“Thanks,” he said.
That’s it. That was the exchange.
The impact he made on me had nothing to do with words. It was the recognition in his eyes, and I believe he saw the same thing in mine. I’ve experienced such recognition seldom in my life, but each time it has startled me. It happened first with Andrew and then with Tom. The third time it happened Mark and Molly were teenagers. I attended a conference for language arts teachers and experienced this phenomenon with the keynote speaker, an educational consultant and motivational speaker from the Denver area. After all these years, I have not forgotten chatting with a group of friends, getting up from the couch to throw away a cup, and seeing him across the room, engaged in a serious conversation with a woman but looking straight at me. Nor will I forget his obvious interest in and approval of what he saw. That evening he sat with the teachers from my school at dinner, and I hoped no one noticed how lively our discussion was, how easily I made him laugh, how much we enjoyed spending an evening of our lives together. I can’t even remember his name now and I never saw him again, but I have not forgotten the shock of being seen.
That brief moment on top of Santa Cruz Island shocked me in the same way.
But I dismissed it and continued my exploration, trekking from one side of the plateau to the other, looking out at an ocean sparkling in the noon sunshine. I was thankful for the sun, because even with long jeans and a hooded Santa Barbara sweatshirt, it was cool. I looked down at the water far below and saw movement, which turned out to be three whales dipping in and out of the water. I felt like Wordsworth, surprised by joy, as I gasped and turned as if to tell Tom what I had seen. When I looked toward the whales again, I saw only their tails, signaling their return to deep water.
Oh well,
I thought,
Tom would have missed them anyway.
I had an agenda for the top of the mountain. After seeing what I could see, I planned to eat the snacks I’d brought while I read a section of John 13. I found a large, flat rock that overlooked the ocean and sat down to soak up the sun and munch on granola bars, a banana, and an apple. Pulling Tom’s Bible out of my backpack, I read about Jesus kneeling before his disciples to wash their feet. This simple act must have taught them so much about what it meant to be his. The first verse said Jesus wanted to show them “the full extent of his love.” Loving and giving and serving seem to be synonymous. I was so blessed to be married to a man who understood what Jesus was saying in this passage.
I stood up, put my trash in the Ziploc bag I had conveniently crammed into my pocket, stuffed it into my backpack, and chugged a bottle of water.
It’s happened,
I thought as I looked across miles of sea.
Gratitude has surpassed grief.
Coming down the mountain, which was slightly easier than going up the thing, I passed a young couple and a group of college kids, but when I reached the road at the bottom and walked past an old uninhabited farmhouse, I ran into no one until I saw him sitting at a picnic table, a laptop open in front of him.