sun and shade

Bare branches reaching into blue winter sky; dark fingers stretched against the blaze of a January sunset – this is one thing I actually long for in winter, a sight that summer in all it’s lushness cannot produce for me. The contrast, the space that is created when the leaves are stripped away, is a singular kind of beauty found only in these months of mostly gray.

Today, under such a winter sky, with bright sun streaming down, dirty cotton ball clouds scudding by – today I stood behind a girl much too young as she stood by her mother’s grave.  My daughter’s friend, this girl I’ve known since kindergarten days, faced a loss that I with all my 38 years cannot imagine facing. I cried for her, for the future so radically changed before her eyes.

Earlier we sat in pews, noses stinging from incense, ancient unfamiliar words ringing around our heads.  When I recognized a single verse the relief that washed over me brought fresh tears. Even that strangeness was fitting, since every step down the short path to this unwanted day has been one more step of utter disbelief. Too many things that could never have happened simply did.

Around me sat dear friends and almost strangers, fellow mothers-met-in-kindergarten and the teacher from that same bright classroom. Looking between their shoulders to the front of the church, I watched my daughter huddle close to her friend, leaning her head close to whisper.  I alternatively hoped and worried over what was happening in that space ahead of me; wanting her to be a comfort, hoping neither one would giggle. The chanting beat out a rhythm, the incense circled and swirled again.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I see my daughter’s arm creep around the shoulder of her friend. Only after it is over will I realize how she cried.  Far from being a distraction, she has loved someone in a hard place, in the best way she knows how.

And the branches, bleak and bare, open their arms to the cold bright sky.