How To Build A Sandcastle

She leaned over her flower bed, hands busy doing that digging and earthing thing she does. I pulled into the driveway, parked the car. Sat for a few beats. Who will greet me today? Will she smile and giggle like a child? Or converse like the old days, the days Before. She called out a hello as I closed the car door. I inhaled deep and stepped closer into the converging lanes of our lives, where our past and present are causing detours missing on my GPS. I walked over to her and she stood up, this ninety-year-old neighbor of ours. A few words we exchanged and that big sadness I felt lately lifted for a few stolen moments. Like when a small child blows a wish into a gentle breeze, a promise is born again.

She used to watch my son all those years ago, giving a young mom a break so I could go running. He rode his wooden horse pretending to be one of the characters on The Three Amigos. On a good day she remembers. On an off day, the mind sifts like sand and her car is missing from a parking lot, thieves are entering the house, neighbors lurk bad all around. I kneel and pray for the good days to outweigh the off days, for grace to shelter her frame, her wandering mind. Maybe when the mind starts the sifting, and all those stored-up memories co-mingle like a jig-saw puzzle gone wrong, maybe we each get that extra brushstroke of grace, that unique part to play in the unedited piece of the story. The raw uncut version. 

I looked at my friend intently today. Missing that piece of her that is already gone. She went back to her beloved garden, bent over once again, reaching down into her patch of the earth, her unfinished story writing itself into the land she loves, as if nothing has changed. And in the middle of her sifting, I do the recollecting, crafting a giant sandcastle in the shape of a resurrected heart.

She motions to an over-sized six-foot bush hugging her freshly-mowed lawn, tells me there is a sparrow living in there, a family of birds nesting she says. An innocent smile plays across her face. Surveying the shrub I look for evidence, perk the ears for the sweet sound. Silence hangs in the spring air. I smile a yes. Holding tight to beautiful, I see an invisible bird, hear a mother sparrow trilling it over her young, and this infinite grace is winging it once again , sprinkling joy and peace all over my dear friend and me.