The frost did not come

"Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you." — Jeremiah 29:12

Saturday morning. The frost did not come last night.

I checked the weather at nine o'clock and covered the tomatoes with the old sheets the way I do every October, the way Mama did and her mother did, and Earl used to say there was more linen on the garden than on the bed, and this morning I went out at first light and it was thirty-eight degrees and the tomatoes were fine and the sheets were wet with dew and I pulled them off and folded them and brought them inside smelling like October.

The last eight green tomatoes are still out there. They are not going to make it and I am not pulling them yet.

Jeremiah says when you call upon me and pray to me I will hear you, and the part I notice this morning is the when. Not if. When. As if the calling is inevitable, as if at some point every living person turns around and says the name.

I called this morning. It was not fancy. It was standing in the yard with wet sheets in my arms and the tomatoes alive underneath them and the coffee going inside and the light coming in at that early-October angle that makes everything look like it has been rinsed. I said thank you and that was the whole prayer.

Thanksgiving is easier than asking. That is a thing I would not have said at forty but I am saying it now. When I was younger the prayer was a list of things I needed, and the list was long and urgent and every item on it felt like it would not get done without my asking. I needed Earl to stay. I needed Hannah to come home. I needed the money for the roof. I needed the doctor to say something different.

He did not say anything different. Earl did not stay. Hannah went her own way. The roof got fixed eventually. And the prayer that is left after you have asked for the things that did not come is a different kind of prayer. It is smaller and it is truer and most mornings it starts with thank you because I am still here and the coffee is hot and the frost did not come.

Thank you, Lord, for the eight tomatoes. Thank you for the sheets that smelled like October. Thank you that I was awake for it.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.