Grace

“It is almost trite to say that grace operates….in an unanticipated, Flannery O’Connor sort of way. It can – and should – confound and surprise us. Grace causes pain because, as the great Southern Catholic author knew, it transforms us.” -Patrick Griffin, “The Dark Gospel of Martin Scorsese,” Notre Dame Magazine, Spring 2020

We have little yellow flowers in our backyard that no one in our family remembers from past springs. They are around our trees and the fence and they look deliberate, as though someone plotted, and planted, and knew something about what these flowers needed to grow.

I know about the Black-eyed Susans behind our garage, and of course there are the hydrangeas. I have never seen these. The four of us mentioned the flowers on a Saturday night while we were eating dinner outside and Hadley said, “Well guys, it doesn’t get any better than this,” and we all laughed because we thought she was being sarcastic.

“No,” she said seriously,” The view. This is a great view,” and we all looked at where we were and that’s when one of us mentioned the flowers. Had we seen them before? Did one of us plant them and forget? What kind of flowers are they anyway?

That morning, I took a floor mat outside to whack off all the white petals that we bring inside almost every hour on the hour. All day long I find pedals in the house, another new development. The tree they come from blooms like this every year, but we’ve never spent as much time as we have these days in the backyard. The petals come in with us now.

I left the mat on our deck and while I vacuumed inside a bluejay landed on it and stood there for a second or two.

It means nothing, I’m sure, but I’d never seen a bluejay so close before and I don’t know if it’s accurate to say their blue is shocking, but I’m used to the mash of browns of the robins, and the grey of the sparrows. We have a couple of cardinals too, but they don’t get this close, and I guess I’ve grown used to their red. Or maybe I’m intimidated by the color, and am happy to keep my distance.

I’ve heard bluejays are mean, but blue seems like just a hopeful color so I stopped vacuuming and stepped closer and the bird hopped around a bit. Maybe it was taunting me.

If it had pooped on our mat, I would’ve thrown it away because that’s the kind of house keeper I am, but it danced around a bit and then flew away.

I learned recently that a bird pooping on your head is good luck. I don’t think this is scientific fact. It’s more something you’d have to believe, like faith, and look I’m not trying to preach, we are talking about birds using the entire world as a giant toilet and sometimes we are going to get in the way of that.

Lately though, I’ve been saying, “I hope for nothing, but I have faith in everything.” The watermelons are on sale – and ripe – at the grocery store, and so are asparagus. Jesse has learned how to make sourdough bread, and Harper’s reading the Twilight series as though she’s earning her PhD in vampires. Her commentary on Rosalie Cullen – a character whose purpose I assumed was only there to intimidate – is thorough and haunting and I’m wondering if Harper looks at everyone in this same way – as complicated and always changing and capable of love.

And there’s Hadley who tells us as we’re sitting at the table outside under a great big tree whose pedals are snow white to take a look around; it doesn’t get any better than this.

I recently read a book with a main character who’s struggling (duh – no struggle, no story), and another woman, an older lady (of course she’s going to be an older lady; seems to me that’s when they’re the wisest and the craziest and the two can’t be deciphered), tells the main character what she needs is to love something that doesn’t need her.

I have been wondering – and terrified – of what that would be like, to love something that doesn’t need me, but then a bluejay does a tic-tok worthy dance on my floor mat, and there are these yellow flowers in our backyard that none of us asked for.

And one night, everyone is doing something else, and I feel a vacancy and want to brood about it because it’s not fun to feel vacant but then I remember that bird poop on the head might be good luck and that it might be good to love something that doesn’t need me so I go outside. I turn the twinkle lights on. I light the candles and I sit. The wind in the trees sounds different now that their leaves are full grown. The wind rustles now and the branches don’t knock together like antlers of male deers fighting for territory.

It’s well past when I tell the girls they should be in bed, but I am trying on what it feels like not to be needed and I don’t like it, but I like sitting out here more, so I stay.

A man blasting Duran Duran’s, “Hungry Like The Wolf,” walks down our street, lifting up the garbage cans that we’ve all set out because tomorrow is trash pick-up day. I am sure he will see me sitting here. I am sure he will see the lights and the flames from the candles and then he’ll see me looking at him.

Maybe he does, but the song keeps playing and he keeps looking through what we’ve all thrown away.

A mosquito buzzes in my ear, and I flinch but I don’t swat at it. Not because I think the man will see me but because of the bluejay and the yellow flowers and because Hadley says it doesn’t get any better than this, and I’m trying to believe it.