a table by the window

The New York couple had looked forward to this evening for weeks.Lobster,dripping in butter, french fries and dessert at their favorite local restaurant.It was New Years' Eve but an early evening celebration: they had a football game to watch together.This was to be a lovely time of feasting with no bother.They felt fortunate to be going after all these married years together.Still enjoying the company of each other.

While praying for guidance for the year to come,the grey haired woman seemed to be nudged to practise the much misunderstood virtue of humility.What? Be a doormat?No, just think of yourself second.There is a beautiful prayer that helps with this effort: ..."From the desire of being praised,deliver me Oh,Lord.From the desire of being extolled,Deliver me oh,Lord." And so on. Daily,she had been sitting with this prayer.

They made reservations which would guarantee their favorite window table overlooking the spilling mill water and pond.When they arrived, they found the table not yet ready so they sat elsewhere.Then, the table was cleared and something happened.A warm glow began as the wife had a startling thought.She would let their table go for the next person that came in.Unknown to them, she would bless them with the view.

"That's not my thinking",she mused."Not me at all.What's mine is mine and I deserve it";but the glow grew and filled her as she acquiesced to this alien idea.

This story is so very subtle that it seems like nothing.A small thing that no one noticed.A summer breeze.A pink dogwood blossom drifting down onto the pond.But for her,monumental.

the shells

The garden is empty,the only sound is the palm fronds slapping together in the afternoon breeze and the small fountain which bubbles water up from a pipe.The pond with the fountain has several very large orange and white goldfish.It is a small garden shaded by large old oaks and there are a few wrought iron tables and chairs and pots with Impatience.A small brick path cuts through to the front door of the old inn that has operated as such since the 1700s.

A small figure appears at the gate and then she cautiously comes in and over to the pond and the fish.She has a school uniform on and long straight blond hair to her shoulders.She might be eleven or twelve and her concentration is marked.I watch from a window as she turns and I see what is not obvious at all at first.She has a cranial deformity with a thin face that is not round but pointed.I am  shocked and saddened. As I watch ,a young woman comes in to the garden,takes her hand and they walk out ,onto the street and up the block.

Several days later,almost as if she has been drawn to me by my thinking so often of the two of them ,the Mother is on the beach walking towards me.She has found three beautiful shells.I stop and admire her shells and we start to talk and her story pours out in a stream of pain.She has just moved here with her daughter,feeling led to leave the cold North behind with all the stares. It was a pull she couldn't ignore.She is very unsure that she made the right move.She has yet to find a job and when Celeste goes to school her loneliness is so oppressive.That's why she got on her bike to go to the beach.She was looking for something to let her know that all would be well.Her mother always told her that if she was sad she needed to get busy and do something.Wash a window,write a letter.So, she rode her bike.

Gloria tells of riding the Greyhound down the East Coast and how the sunshine made her hopeful, that it would brown her daughter's face and warm her thin arms.I nodded as the warmth touched my shoulders.

The Sisters at the school have assured Gloria that Celeste will feel at home in her smaller classroom with the sun streaming in and hot lunches at noon.She is comforted by that.She tells me about the small green and pink house they have rented a half block from the inn and a block from the school.The girl's room has a large window with a bright white shelf that holds a picture of goldfish and now the shells can go there.The girl calls it her" happy window."We smile,her mother and I ,and part.



I

Sea Glass

Every morning,the people in the houses by the shore see her go out,bending and stooping,looking for her sea glass.It is what gets her out of bed on some days, this obsession of hers.If she didn't do this,what would she do? Her desperate loneliness is the other constant but she brushes that thought aside.

It has been five years since her husband died ;some say rather unkindly that it was to get away from her constant talking. From the minute her feet hit the floor in the morning, she would chatter,draping complaints over all the chairs,tables and walls.To listen to her was so tiring;but he had to stay alert in case she said,"What do you think?" Of course, she never did but paying attention and holding back any random thought that he had just wore him out and he died.He had read that constant talking was a way of keeping people and pain at bay and he tried to discuss this with her to no avail.She thought herself witty,learned and very interesting.When her family joked about her talking too much she smiled at the attention.

As she walks, she thinks of the child that she encountered on the beach yesterday.He asked so many questions..."what are you doing...have you found many...what do you do with them?" She had found three pieces of glass and she showed them to the small ,red-headed boy with the bright eyes.He was rather cute but such a bother.

He took the pale blue one that is shaped like a diamond and looked through it at the sun and then the swirling gulls.He shrieked,"blue gulls" and fell down laughing. He held it to his ear and then sniffed it."Such foolishness," she thought."This looks like the kite that my Dad and I fly ,it twirls and dashes like this",he cried, and he spun around and fell to the sand and laughed.

He felt the edges of the glass ,the smooth edges and wondered why he doesn't get cut.He wondered how long it had been out there and who lost it.His eyes lit up when he pictures a boy like himself heaving a bottle into the water and the big splash it would make.

He hiked up his wet shorts ,brushed sand from his knees and handed the glass back to the lady.He looked to see if he might pick another one.She handed him a yellow glass that is the color and size of a lemon drop.The boy rubbed it between his hands and listened to the sound.He thought that maybe a ray of sunshine had come down, thrown to earth by a huge man the size of a giant like in the story his mother read to him, "Jack and the Beanstalk".He ran around looking for beans but didn't find any.The yellow glass might be his favorite,he just loved the brightness of it.It seemed like happy glass.

He told the lady that;she just shrugged and handed him the third.This time he was in deep thought,holding the green one.The color seemed to calm him.He smelled the glass to see if it was like the lawn that he lays on when it is summer and the grass has been cut.He thinks of how the grass holds him while he looks to the sky and checks to see if the clouds are lazy or grumpy and mean.

The green glass really holds his attention."Maybe it is an eye of a princess who lost it here and I will find her and give it to her and be a big hero,"he thought.He smiles with pleasure at this.The boy really wanted to keep this one and he hesitates a minute ,hoping, but then he hands it back.

She didn't know this but the small boy was sorry to see her go ,this lady with the much admired collection of sea glass.But she hurried up the beach to keep looking and he didn't know but she was hoping he wouldn't follow.He liked her and as he ran home he was so excited at the idea of telling his family about the glass.

That night, with his sandy feet curled up, he would fall into a deep sleep that came very quickly.She rocks in her chair as she thinks of all the sea glass in the cold plain jar,and for her sleep is far away.