Sunday Letter

Sunday Evening

Ruby Hayes

— 2 min read
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Watercolor of a farmhouse living room at evening with a green armchair, an open book, a sleeping dog on a braided rug, a woodstove, and sunset light through the windows.

"Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways. The Lord be with all of you." — 2 Thessalonians 3:16

It is Sunday evening and the last week of August is almost here.

I am in the chair by the lamp and the windows are open and the evening is cooler than it has been in weeks. Not fall. The heat will come back. But the evening has shifted and I can feel it the way I feel everything this time of year, which is in my body before I feel it in my mind.

The week held a memory I had not visited in a long time. The week held eggs and toast at the diner and a prayer that got quieter than I expected and a morning in the garden where I stood still and let the season speak. The week held a phone call with Becca on her birthday, forty-nine years of her, and a Sunday at Trinity where the church was small and faithful and warm.

The garden is finishing. The curriculum is on the table. The children come back in three weeks and I am already thinking about the sower and the mustard seed and the circle of chairs and the felt board. Emma and Caleb have a birthday coming, September fourteen. Emma will be sixteen. Caleb will be eight. I pray for them both, differently, the way you pray for grandchildren who are growing in two different houses in two different ways.

Dan called Tuesday, the way Dan calls Tuesday. Becca called yesterday. Hannah and I talked Thursday evening, briefly, about nothing and everything, the way we do.

September is coming. The summer is not over but it is leaning. I can feel the year underneath the heat, turning the way years turn, slowly and without asking permission. The garden will go to bed. The church will fill up. The air will change. I will be here, at this table, with the coffee and the journal and the morning, doing what I have always done, which is showing up.

My mother used to say that August is not a month for starting things. She was right. I did not start anything this August. I finished things, and I stood in the middle of things, and I let the season do what it was doing. That is enough. That has always been enough.

Until next Sunday.