He watched as she readied her children for church, the attention and care she put into their dress, hair, presentability; licking her fingers and smoothing wildness in son’s hair by combing it with touch back to cultivated order.
Her studied her, in her own dismissing of self in service to her children, another floral dress, yellow with red rose-burst pattern shining in cover and drape over late-summer skin, the height of her tan before fall tempered again skin hue of life in the brightness of sun and long summer days.
Her own hair was wild, wild in composed and gathered way. It’s curls and volume in south summer air was combed and held back, but its freedom still expressed, just as her spirit when she dropped her guards and allowed herself the liberty to be the fullness of herself. She did that less these days, at least for view of the world. There were times when she was free, in the company and sharing of those she trusted true, in those who accepted without judgment, in openness and understanding for the wildness that is in all that live with passion and desire to become whatever it is that enflames guided spirit.
“We’re going to be late…” she said in worry and already beginning judgment of herself.
“Then we’ll be late,” he answered in a tone that did not denigrate, but accepted, the condition.
“We’ll be judged.”
“Then let them judge,” he answered. “How many don’t go because they fear judgment from the person sitting next to them? Isn’t church for God, not fitting into the fold? Isn’t that why Jesus had to come and blow up all the false righteousness of the old leaders and holy men that put judgment above love and empathy for their fellow man?
We’ll be late, but we’ll be there; which is more than all those who never go. I believe God will value our effort above a world-fixed timeline. We’ll get there when we get there.”
With his spoken conciliations, a strain eased visibly in her composure. Her face softened, and a tightness in body loosened with a restored freedom as the dress that she adorned, and as she contemplated, her smile showed again as, still addressing her son’s hair, she left the final strand free to be wild and misplaced. A cowlick always left made it that way. The hair was not a dishevelment, but mark of uniqueness, a God-placed accent that caused his hair to fan.
Why should she hide it and force it to lay like the rest? She left it wild as it was.
As they departed from the home making way from door to vehicle in the light of morning summer sun, he spoke further to her, “You look beautiful, and you’re doing a great job.”
People are wont to dismiss others and conditions where excellence is seen as a common state. Such people and conditions are dismissed, sometimes even denigrated—when opportunities arise—in belief such excellence is inherently known and acknowledged; and when such excellency deviates from its common condition, the same who dismiss are fast to call fault to the human shortcomings that are natural to us all. Not wanting to dismiss like the mass of world’s common fold, he spoke again from want to be more than the silent world; willing to say too much rather than to leave a goodness unsaid, an affirmation unspoken, “You’re beautiful, and you’re doing a great job.”
Her face reddened through the bronze richness of her summer skin as she shone in similitude to rose pattern of dress that caught slight in morning wind. She did not need the floral dresses to be seen as a beauty in bloom, but they complimented her all the same, accenting sign for the way she wished to be seen, and was; admired in silence by so many but rarely returned in compliment for her beautiful soul and self—words and acknowledgments received and spoken by so few.