Mother's Day: 6 Months

The African violet is blooming again. 

So is the apple tree outside my window, the one that arches over the steps like a wedding bower.

I feel lightning trembling invisible in the air, and the clouds are dark. It's about time for a spring storm to break. I crave the sound of thunder and the splash of drops hitting the dryness. 

The fan is once again determinedly blowing humid air into the tiny nest I live in, and I'm sitting cross-legged right in front of it writing this and waiting for the rain. 

Waiting. 

I walked to the cemetery yesterday. The earth is still brown, there in that place where my eyes want to look both first and last. The grass has not yet had a chance to grow. This was not my first time going back. There was grief in it, yes, but it was not the grief that lays one flat and makes you wish the body back. I was reminded that the body is a body. The soul has long since gone elsewhere, to a place where beauty lives and truth is fully understood and fears are stilled. I can't describe it well enough, or well at all. Words fail, and my understanding is small.

I went to visit my little mother this weekend. It was good to be home, good to be in Nanticoke again, good to see crabapple blossoms and sunsets, to read books to children and to share a Mother's Day feast with my sister's family. Some things stay the same. That mother of mine is pretty precious.

Driving back to Bainbridge tonight watching the clouds, though, I feel restless again. I long for what was, I long for what will be. To borrow a metaphor from a friend, I feel a bit like a rock in a stream. I suppose God puts rocks in streams for reasons of His own, though. 

I was reminded today that God moves in His own time and in His own way. And His time and His ways are good, even when I lack the patience to wait well.

The storm hasn't broken yet, but it will. And we need rain.