Sunday Evening

"I remember your name in the night, O LORD, and keep your law." — Psalm 119:55

It is Sunday evening and the longest day of the year is almost done.

I am in the chair by the lamp and the windows are open and the air coming in is warm and smells like the garden and the road and something green that I think is the walnut tree on the north side of the property. Biscuit is on the porch. I can hear him breathing through the screen.

Father's Day is not a day I know what to do with. For years it belonged to Earl and I gave it to him the way you give a person a day, which is by letting them have it without making it into something they have to perform. Now it belongs to Dan, and I gave it to him differently today, which is by telling him what his father would have said if his father were here to say it.

This was a good week. The memory piece I wrote on Monday surprised me, the way memory does when you are not looking for it and it shows up anyway. I had not thought about the apartment above the feed store in years. The card table. The too much salt. But there it was, sitting at the table with me, and I wrote it down because that is what I do now with the things that come back.

The week ahead has no anchor. No birthday, no anniversary, no day that needs to be carried. I do not remember the last time that was true. Becca called on Thursday and we talked about nothing for twenty minutes and it was exactly right. The garden is producing. The fireflies are steady. The roses are finished for the year, the last petals on the ground, and I swept them off the porch this morning and thought about next June, which is a long way from here and will come anyway.

Tomorrow is a Monday and the days start getting shorter and the summer is at its fullest, and there is nowhere I would rather be than in this chair with this lamp and this window open and this evening coming down.