I will be at the store

"My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." — Exodus 33:14

I was thinking this morning about my father and the first day of school.

He walked me. Every September, every year, from kindergarten through fifth grade, my father walked me down Oak Street to the elementary school and he did not say much on the walk because he was not a man who said much. He was a hardware store man. He opened the store at seven and closed it at five-thirty and in between he sold nails and sandpaper and caulk and screen door hinges to people who needed nails and sandpaper and caulk and screen door hinges, and he did this six days a week for most of his life, and the walk to school was the one part of the morning that belonged to me.

He wore his work boots. I remember this. Not dress shoes, not church shoes. The brown boots he wore to the store, the ones that had the hardware store in them the way a glove has the hand in it. He carried my lunch in his left hand and my hand in his right and we walked and the September mornings in Lexington were cool and bright and the leaves on Oak Street were just starting to think about turning and the air smelled like the creek and the mountain and the beginning of something.

He did not say be good. He did not say work hard. He did not say make me proud. He said, at the door, every year, the same thing. He said, "I will be at the store." That was it. That was the whole sermon. I will be at the store. You know where I am. If you need me, I am there. I am not going anywhere.

I am seventy-seven years old and my father has been gone a long time and the hardware store is something else now and Oak Street is still Oak Street and September still comes and the air still smells like the beginning of something. And every September I remember the boots and the lunch in his left hand and my hand in his right and the four words at the door.

I will be at the store.

There are things your father gives you that you do not understand until you are old enough to need them, and the thing he gave me every September morning was the knowledge that he was not going anywhere. That he was where he said he would be. That the world had a fixed point and it was a man in brown boots behind a counter who sold nails.

The morning is quiet. Biscuit is asleep. The Bible is open to Exodus and God is saying to Moses what my father said to me, which is: my presence will go with you. I am not going anywhere. You know where I am.

Lord, thank you for the ones who stayed where they said they would be.