Sunday Evening

Ruby Hayes

— 2 min read
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Watercolor of a worn quilted barn jacket hanging on a wooden peg inside a farmhouse front door, late amber light through the door glass falling across the wall and shoulder.

"Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy." — Psalm 96:11-12

It is Sunday evening and the year has gone over the top of the hill.

The equinox was Tuesday, a little after eight in the evening, and I was inside with the lamp on and did not notice a thing. That is how it goes. The great turning points of the natural world are almost entirely unattended. The earth came level and tipped and nobody at this address looked up.

Monday I was back in 1975 with a boy named Curtis who would not talk, and I still do not know what happened to him. Tuesday the year came level. Wednesday I stood at the garden fence and did not pull a single thing, and Henry Beale went by and told me it was about that time, and he was right and I did nothing about it. Thursday I heard my mother in my own head telling me to do it while the light is free, and I went out and did it. Friday I decided that numbering your days means learning how small one is. Saturday I said the list in the same order I say it every morning, which is the only reason I got through some mornings this year.

And this morning there were eight children in the circle and one of them answered a question.

I said last Sunday that something had happened and it was mine for a few more days before it was anything else. It has been a week and I will tell you the little of it that I understand.

It is not that he came. It is that this morning was ordinary.

The first time a thing like that happens it takes the top of your head off and you cannot teach. The second time you teach. That is all the difference, and it is the whole difference. The extraordinary thing about this morning is that nothing about it was extraordinary, and I am aware that is a sentence that reads like nothing at all, and I am telling you it is the best news I have had in some years.

I am not going to make a plan out of it. I do not know about next Sunday and I am not going to ask anybody, and if you have got a person in your family you have to be careful around, you know exactly the muscle I am using and how tired it gets.

The psalm tonight is the loud one. Let the field exult. Let the trees of the forest sing for joy. It is not a quiet psalm and it is not a modest one, and I picked it on purpose, because I am not able to be loud about this and somebody ought to be.

So: let the field exult. The field has had a good year and it is going down now in decent order. The trees on the ridge are two weeks from turning. The light is leaving at a quarter past seven and taking four minutes a night with it, and I have got a jacket on the hook and a flashlight in the drawer for November.

And there is a boy an hour from here who knows my name.

Until next Sunday.