More Things In Heaven And Earth

Chapter Five

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. -Jackie Robinson

Early morning sun invaded our bedroom through the spaces around the window blinds. I lay, staring at the red numbers on the clock as the minutes of my life passed. I listened to the chatter around me.

She is broken.

She's already failed.

He can do nothing.

He questions The One.

I want more.

They can't be stopped.

They can't go on.

I had no desire to scream and wail at the voices. I just wanted to rest. Leaden weariness pressed me into the mattress. I felt like I was recovering from a near-death experience. I admitted that was close to the truth.

My thoughts drifted along, flotsam and jetsam on the churning tide of the universal consciousness.

I recalled a thousand times when my children had shrugged and said, "I don't care," or "whatever." My mind served up a thousand more instances when I had said the same thing.

I thought of all the times I put my head down and hurried past a beggar. I was in a hurry. The money in my wallet was marked for something else. I felt awkward and uncomfortable in those moments, and didn't want to be bothered by strangers.

An image of my friend, Janet, from high school surfaced. She had been a raging hippie. She was going to travel the world, leaving a trail of positive change in her wake. By the time she was thirty she was six figures in debt with student loans and a mortgage, working at the local grocery store, trying to make ends meet after her husband left her with two children and very little financial support. She screamed at her kids every night and smoked weed all weekend, reminiscing about the good old days and scoffing at her idealistic youth.

I considered the recent election in which the people voted down a proposal that would encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable bags to the store with them in order to avoid excess plastic going into the dump and littering the landscape. Disposable bags were so convenient.

I remembered the pastor from my childhood. A handsome, well-spoken man who knew every member of the congregation. When I had been in Jr. High he took us on a mission trip. We were fixing up houses in a poverty-stricken county. He told us not to speak to the people. "You don't know what those kind of people are like," he said. As I painted a window shutter I'd peered in at them; a family of three looking sad and tired and embarrassed to have a bunch of children in designer clothes working on their home.

Maybe we were a broken people. Maybe the universe was broken. Maybe it had always been that way. If so, wasn't it beyond repair?

The creature had chewed the man's arm the way people chew on chicken legs. My stomach churned. I forced down my gorge.

In my mind's eye the angel, Raziel, shed his body and loomed before me.

You're already falling apart. He chose poorly. Don't you agree, Simone? The hissing tormentor was back.

When nature could no longer be denied, I slid my feet into the ridiculous furry pink slippers Donovan had given me for my last birthday, and left the refuge of my blanket-nest.

Searching for normalcy, I took a cup of coffee out to the porch and sat there, feet up on the rail, and watched the world come to life.

Ike came for morning snuggles and I held him, breathing in deeply of the sweet scent of his fine blonde hair. I held his chubby body a little too tight and insisted that he stay with me a few minutes longer than he really wanted to. Again and again I pressed my lips to his warm head and told him I loved him.