Forty-nine

"Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure." — Psalm 16:9

Becca is forty-nine today and I called her this morning before she left for work.

She answered on the second ring, which is Becca. She has always answered on the second ring. Not the first, because the first ring catches her reaching for the phone. Not the third, because by the third ring she would have already picked up. The second ring. Every time. For forty-nine years, give or take the years before she had a phone of her own.

I said happy birthday and she said thank you, Mama, and I could hear the kitchen behind her. Tom was making breakfast. Sarah had called already. Ben had not called yet because Ben is nineteen and nineteen-year-olds do not call before nine on a Saturday but he would call by noon because he is Ben and Ben does not forget. Emma was still asleep, which is what fifteen-year-olds do in August.

We talked about nothing. We talked about the garden and the tomatoes and the peach preserves and the weather and her plans for the weekend, which are small and deliberate the way Becca's plans have always been. Dinner with Tom. Maybe a walk. Maybe not. She does not need a birthday to be anything more than a day, and that is one of the things I love most about her.

She is the child I do not worry about. I have said this before. I have thought this more times than I have said it. She is the steady one, the one who stayed close, the one whose kitchen looks like mine. She calls on Sundays. She comes on Saturdays when she can. She does not need to be asked and she does not need to be thanked and she does not keep score, which is a kind of grace I did not teach her. She came that way. Some children do.

Forty-nine. She will be fifty next year, which is a number I cannot make peace with because I can still hear the four-year-old in the doorway with her hands over her ears watching the vacuum cleaner. I can still see the girl who faced the scary thing by standing in the room where it was happening. She is still that girl. She has just gotten taller and quieter about it, which is how women grow, in steadiness and in grace.

Lord, thank you for the child who always answers on the second ring.