Dear Becca

"Her children rise up and call her happy; her husband too, and he praises her." — Proverbs 31:28

Dear Becca,

You called last night and we talked for thirty minutes about nothing and it was one of the better conversations I have had all week, which tells you something about the quality of my week and also about the quality of nothing when it is shared with someone who does not need to fill it.

You told me about the tomatoes at the market in Roanoke and I told you about the first Rutgers and we compared notes the way we always do, as if we were not both growing the same things in the same heat an hour apart, which we are, except you have never liked zucchini and I have never understood why.

I want to tell you something I do not say because saying it would change it. You are the child I do not worry about. Hannah is Hannah and I love her and I carry her the way I carry everything, which is in the back of the journal and in the first hour of the morning. But you I do not carry because you do not need carrying. You are steady. You have been steady since you were small. You were the one who caught fireflies and brought them to me in a jar and when I told you to let them go before bed you did it without argument, just opened the lid and watched them lift off into the yard, and I knew then that you were going to be fine, and you have been fine, and the fineness of you is something I rest against without you knowing it.

I do not need to send this letter because I will see you Saturday or the Saturday after and we will sit on the porch and talk about the garden and the heat and nothing in particular and that will be enough. But the writing is the thing. You know that by now.

With love, Ruby

Lord, she is the child I do not worry about. That is its own kind of blessing.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.