It’s a text, not a call, and perhaps that should have meant fewer shivers through my body in the cool quiet of the public library. But it doesn’t, because when my person says that he needs me, can I come home, what that means is I throw everything into my backpack and I run out the door, the blurry faces of the library workers passing on my left. One of them calls, “Have a great day!” but I don’t answer, because here and now it is time to run. I get the dog from her daycare next door and I throw her in the car and I throw myself in the car.
As I’m writing this, I’m trying to type faster and faster to convey the way my body moved. There is no way to explain it, the press of my legs against the hot cloth of the seat, the way the dog looked worried as I drove just a little too fast, edged around the end of the yellow light. But maybe you can see this, if you read these words, how I gripped the wheel at ten and two, how my eyes felt like they were burning into the street in front of me, the cars in front of me, the way my muscles forgot how they ached at the end of a long day because I could not process anything except that now I needed to be home, and I was in the car on my way but I was not home yet.
I tell God on this drive that he owes us all. The audacity of it, I know, I say that to myself as I write this almost a full week later. Who am I to think that God owes me anything? I tell God nonetheless that he owes us, owes my child the safety of breath and of rest and of school days learning to sprout a plant from a kidney bean and hot afternoons under the hose in the red bucket in the backyard. You owe this, I say, you who offered us the chance to choose these things for the baby asleep in the crib six years ago. You invited us to be with you as you gave him things that we would not have believed even if we were told. You invited us to watch you - and better yet, to be with you, to do alongside you - as he sprouted upward like the kidney bean plant, sprung free of the soil, you let us see you work your love in him like a tapestry of a thousand threads, you let us witness the silent way he looks for your face in the icons and the bread and wine and the prayers we shout at the end of the day.
I have written you all these run on sentences because my fingers want to convey what my thoughts feel like, loops of ribbon falling off their spools. This is what I tell God on Bosque, as I drive too fast. I tell God about what God owes us and what God gave us. I tell God that I have not forgotten the hallway, the knowing that entered my bones, the trach that we chose and we have loved and trusted for these years. I tell God that now, when I have not forgotten, God cannot forget either.
I get home. Everyone is fine. The child has a small fever and a big smile, and is resting easy on the couch. I hold him tight and he pushes away, laughing. I look up at my person, the one who chose and chooses with me, and he smiles. We hold each other a long time, even while the children run through the rest of their day and spill their juice and refuse to hear us say that it is time to sleep.
You cannot forget. I tell this to God.
You’re right, Hilary. I cannot.
what I tell God on Bosque
That drive, that chasing fear, home, taking your breath… I’m sorry for the moments you carry your heart in your hands, saying God, look at this, hold this. The fear is so true and real. I’m sorry. I’m grateful you can home to a small fever and a loving son, smiling.
God has not forgotten you.
♥️