Sunday Evening

"And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful." — Colossians 3:15

It is Sunday evening and the first week of August is behind me.

I am in the chair by the lamp and the windows are open and the evening sounds are the same ones they have been all summer, which is crickets and the occasional car on the county road and Biscuit breathing on the floor beside me. He is asleep. He has earned it.

The week held more than I expected. I heard that the woman's husband died, and I made a dish and took it to her house and did not stay long. I stood in my kitchen remembering my mother at the stove. I spent a morning in the garden wondering how much longer the beans will give. I thought about the children coming back in September and I felt the particular anticipation that comes with nearly fifty years of first Sundays.

I went to church this morning and the congregation was small and the singing was good and I came home and did not do anything in particular for the rest of the afternoon. Dan will call Tuesday. Becca may call this week. I have tomatoes to put up and a garden to tend and nothing pressing beyond the work that August itself provides.

The summer is more than half gone now. I can feel it in the evenings, which come earlier than they did in June, and in the light, which has shifted in a way I cannot describe except to say that it is August light and not July light and I know the difference the way I know the difference between my mother's voice and anyone else's.

My mother used to say that August is not a month for starting things. She was right. This is a month for finishing, for standing at the stove, for sitting on the porch after supper and letting the day end without asking anything more of it.

Until next Sunday.