Olivia

"All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the prosperity of your children." — Isaiah 54:13

I was thinking this morning about Olivia.

She lives four hours south of here, in Charlotte, with Dan and Beth, and she started fourth grade this month in a school I have never seen, with a teacher I know only as a name Dan said over the phone. Most Sundays she is in somebody else’s church in somebody else’s town, and I am here in the fellowship hall at Trinity with eight chairs in a circle and the crayons in the coffee can and a room full of children who are not mine.

That is the arrangement. I made my peace with it a long time ago.

But when they come, she comes with them, and she takes the same chair. Second from the window. Every time, without anybody telling her to, the way a person takes the seat that is theirs. She has done it since she was seven. She will do it in October when they come for the weekend, and she will do it at Christmas, and each time she is a little taller and a little further along and a little more herself.

She prays out loud. Nine years old and she prays out loud while the other children are still learning how, and the room goes quiet when she does it, and I have to be careful with my face.

I have taught Sunday school for forty-nine years and I have learned that some children pass through the room and some children live in it. Olivia has never had the chance to live in it. She gets six or seven Sundays a year and she makes them count, and I have come to think that is its own kind of living in a room.

Next year she will be ten and too old for the circle. That is how the class works. So whatever Sundays are left are the last ones, and I do not know how many that is. Four, maybe. Five if the year is generous.

I could be sour about this. There was a stretch after Earl died when I was sour about a good many things, including how far away Charlotte is and how much of my son’s life happens without me in the room for it. I am not sour anymore. Dan built a good life and it is four hours from here and that is not a failure of his or mine. It is just the shape of it.

She calls me Grandma. The other children call me Miss Ruby. Both are right, and on the Sundays she is here I am both at once, and I have to be careful with my face then too.

Lord, thank you for the children who come when they can.