Fifty-two years

"Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God." — Ruth 1:16

I cut roses this morning from the side of the house and put them in a jar on the kitchen table.

They opened this week the way they open every June, not all at once but one at a time and on their own schedule, and I stood out there in the yard in my housecoat with the kitchen scissors and I cut three of the good ones, the ones that were full but not yet gone over, and I brought them inside and put them in the blue glass jar that has held anniversary roses for longer than I can say.

Fifty-two years ago today Earl and I stood in the church and said what we said. I wore a dress my mother helped me make. He wore a suit he had borrowed from his brother because he did not own one. The church was small and the afternoon was hot and we meant every word of it without knowing what the words would cost or give.

I do not mark the day the way some people mark things. I do not go to the cemetery. I do not take the day off from the world. I put flowers on the table and I sit at the table and I drink my coffee and the morning is what it is, which is a Monday in June with roses and the fan going and the house quiet around me.

He was not a perfect man. I say this with love and I say it with clear sight. He was stubborn and he was proud and there were years when the farm was not bringing in what it should and he carried it in his body like a weight he would not put down. He had a temper that came rarely and came hard when it did, and there were nights I went to bed angry and mornings I woke up tired of being angry and we got through them the way you get through anything, which is by staying.

But he was the man who tracked red dirt through the hospital the day Hannah was born because he came straight from the hayfield and did not think about his boots. He was the man who gardened the way he worried, which was thoroughly and with too much attention to things he could not control. He was the man I talked to every morning at this table for forty-five years and have talked to every morning since.

The roses are red. The coffee is the temperature of the air. The table looks right with flowers on it on June the eighth, and the doing of them is the purpose now, and the purpose is enough.

Lord, he was mine and I was his and I am grateful.

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