A small song plays in my ear. Only one note, really. A whole note, long, low and full of grace. I hear it as the wail and whirl of time and years and ache.
It is nearly December, the time for reconciliation. Across this country we are gazing out of darkening windows and thinking suddenly of all we want to be. We imagine ourselves good. We imagine ourselves slimmer and smarter and nicer and whole. We imagine more time, more patience, more compassion. We imagine saving more money for rain. We imagine perfect wisdom, unwavering faith, and only peace. We imagine healing.
We can almost hear ourselves rising like a full song, sweet and clean.
The moon is low in the white sky. It’s almost dark, and the boys and I pull up the driveway: home. They go in first, tumble and splay down the hall all elbows, “ooof,” and knees. Their boots come off in a thud of heel-toe-heel-toe-kick; their hoodies, dirty and damp, don’t make it to the hooks. Thudding, they are off to run-jump- stomp in the basement.
I come in behind them. The hall is cold and has been empty of people all day. I scoop up books and folders and move toward the kitchen. The message slash blinks on the phone. I drop a white mail pile on the table; it tips over and slides like slow, dry, snow to the ground.
I am moving, doing three things at once, all the while trying to be still, to even out into some sort of steady and hold.
The dogs, motionless by day, are squeaking and wagging in loops, then beside me, then up on my thighs, jumping, happy. I hold the sides of their faces, squish their cheeks as if I am an old-biddy aunt and then push them off. Content for now, they plop and wait. I put my coat on the back of a chair. Now dinner. I pull out a pot, fill it with water and set it on the stove. No matter what I cook, boiling water is a start. I palm a spoon for stirring and stand there thinking. Spaghetti? Chicken and rice?
That’s when the lists of shoulds begins. I should hang up my coat. I should feed the dogs. I should make the boys start homework. I should keep the counters cleared. I should work more, work less, work harder.
I twirl the spoon in my hand, think about all I should do, all I should be, think about all I will do, all I will be. I sound like a TV show from the ’70s — “The Bionic Woman”: I will rebuild myself. Better. Stronger. Faster. This December, I will do it all.
I hear the boys in waves, gleeful still. The pot of water rolls at a gentle boil. I’ve switched out the spoon for a sharp knife. I cut onions and let oil and garlic bloom across a pan. Just then, the moment changes over from late afternoon to darkness. It comes toward the windows, orange light, and then is gone like a ghost. It is now lamp time, vespers. Switches are snapped on all over town. As our rooms turn dove gray, we call light into service; we illuminate.
There’s so much we want to do better, so much we want to be.
Perhaps this is the only prayer we need: to listen to what we want to be singing deeply in our chests, to discover it at each day’s end in a moment of stillness.
Perhaps this is enough: to pray in whatever way we can — over a pot of hot water, or driving home late in traffic, or alone on a couch lampless and afraid. Perhaps it is enough to pray for graceful notes, to pray for the whole notes, to pray until we feel the sound- shake of God run through us.
December is a time for reconciliation with ourselves: we imagine, we pray, and then we walk quietly in the prayer’s direction.
Deep in the house the boys trill and vibrate — they are growing in a blink, in a breath. I will never be as good as I want to be. But God plants his foot in the music, anyway and always. All we need to do is want to sing as best we can.
E-mail Fort Collins poet and writer Natalie Costanza-Chavez at grace-notes@comcast.net. Read more of her essays at .
