“God apportions things. He is there on high, he sees us all, and he knows what he does in the midst of his great stars…Love each other well and always. There is nothing else but that in the world: love for each other.”—Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
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It was day of kind that oft arrives as gift in heart and late of fall, one of unseasonal and welcomed warmth and light that hints not to the lie of Indian summer but of reverie for springs past and forward hope toward those to come.
In this spirit, Annie dressed like blossom of her home spring-woods; white like cherry and mulberry branches—even finer blossoms stacked heavy on open limbs—but in autumn world, behind burst and bright of white, the limbs were dormant and empty, no waiting buds, swollen for burst into green and new-life cast. Then, growth from buds becoming leaves were colors on the earth, blown, scattered, and cast over ever dulling backdrop of taupe and dying tans.
Still, in radiance of sun and warm-day blessing, they made the most of beautiful day as one does with such gifts, uncertain if that in present should be the autumn’s last.
Annie dressed in white shorts that showed and blouse that cut low, button holding center-draw together, covered in loose-woven, web-knit cardigan showing through to blouse beneath; all finished in tall, high boots that rose on legs in cover of nearly all that shorts did not, stripe of skin between, fine and fair, much as the white that covered rest; and from her sleeves, wrists and hands of equal fineness and grace, nails painted in opal-olive hue that changed in the light of the world.
They went to mass in church on a hill that was center to a university. Modern and progressive in style, he stared on a metallic Christ and thought on the beauty lost and demeaned in praise of new and different when beauty was so simple, overt and true when witnessed in alignment to nature’s and God’s design. Racing for new and modern, even Christ, eternal, was effaced.
After mass, they walked the downward slope from church and university into parks and city sites below.
Hand in hand, they lost themselves together, wandering public city hides. They went to a gallery and walked upon the lawn, by the shuttlecock and through sculpture garden of originals and imitations that enabled one to imagine they were somewhere else. They admired the classic, stared in confused on the modern, souls—like all—made and meant for one and pressured by culture to accept another.
He thought again of the metallic Christ. Beauty was beauty. Nonsense was nonsense. Novel and new did not mean good. Yes, there were some that appealed, but mostly it was confusion and inanity promoted as profound; and after viewing the makes of man, they went to vein of nature that they knew.
They walked the cement paths that lined the bank of a creek, bridges spanning in red bricked and cement arcs where roads and traffic crossed. They rested in a park beside fountain of horses and mounted merman riders; confusing on first examination but more natural—if merman horsemen can ever be such—as one rested, observed, and viewed.
Side-by-side, they rested on bench, each reading and falling into world of dream. He was near to the end of his. It was the second time of its reading, off and on for nearly a year where the first had read like a flash—two months—for a book of such immensity.
It was not the same, not when new and strange and never touched before, but it was still beautiful, profound, and inspiring. There was something to returning and staying with the ones we find and love, discovering and learning better by return and greater giving of focus and attention, the nuances we miss that help to better see, learn, and love.
He hoped to write as that one day: not the story, but of the spirit: God—everywhere and all around, intertwining fates, destinies, and souls in way we can never imagine until tapestry of life and experience is made and in the end is seen in full (or as best one living can) more amazing than ever imagined or dreamed in beginning.
He read, and was breathless again, at its end. He had lived his darkness, despondence, and despairs; and, too, been gifted in touch by God. Shaken, stirred, changed in the core by imparting and revelation of destiny that comes in moment, sense, that one question’s after if it was real at all, but that we believe and follow all the same for it is the only piece that brings life sense.
The book closed, red leather cover, gold embossed with map of a nineteenth century sewer.
Ended, he reflected back upon own life despair—then change and Light. He opened book again, turning through the pages of a near-final chapter. He found and read again.
“The good God says, ‘You fancy that you are about to be abandoned, stupid! No. No, things will not go so. Come, there is a goodman yonder who is in need of an angel.’ And the angel comes…”
He searched for her.
She was moved from place beside and rested then on fountain’s ledge, listening to strike and sound of water’s fall, gazing on light of the soft-waved face and the flash of coins that shone as cast silver and copper dreams over floor of painted fountain pool.
She smiled, waving hand light upon the water—touching and proving real—mirthful in moment and gift of the day; her smile compliment in pair to sun; day’s dress—corona radiance. In her smile, as sometimes comes to sun behind wisp one cannot see, her light softened—diminishing none of the wonder, but allowing one to greater see.
He was humbled and awed and gazed in wonder and adoration.
There is a goodman yonder who is in need of an angel.
He was not abandoned.
His heart was full. He was grateful, for all the ways and intertwining of a work he could not see and that was creating further still.
He stared on her light, her smile and gaze, and gift of autumn day, she shone and lived as spring amidst a world in fall.
“God knows better than we what we need. May you be happy…may youth wed the morning, may there be around you, my children, lilacs and nightingales; may your life be a beautiful, sunny lawn, may all the enchantments of heaven fill your souls.”
In gift of day, such was so.
From the fountain, under gold of sun and azure of sky, they walked again the paved and leaf-strewn paths that led them home. On walk, with squeeze of hand to his, opal nails flashed in change, copper and bronze like dreams in fountain’s pool, light changed too in her eyes.
Returned and restored, in heart of room, he raised her. Single button freed, he stared in wonder on splendor of sun revealed—aurora fallen away, only light and freckled sky—and to gentle-gifted adorations, from soul-source sun-sign’s center, angel came.
Then in the after after, when they spoke, he heard the music of her voice rather than the sense of her words and when in sate she lain in sleep and rest in light of a falling sun, sated bliss of spring-lived dream amidst a world in fall, he returned to the book. Angel beside, he read:
“The proof that God is good is that she is here.”
And it was so.