August 11

Have you read Late Migrations by Margaret Renkle?  If not, I recommend it.  The delicacy of her descriptions of trees, birds and family members touches deeply into my heart, stirring up my own memories of loves and losses.  One piece, Howl, filled my eyes to the brim as I reached for my beloved Beatrice, circled on the ottoman at my feet.  I read the last sentences through the prism of tears.
 
        Wishing I could write like her, I quickly made an excuse for myself: my eyesight is poor.  In first grade, the only thing I remember seeing distinctly was the back of Jim Davis’ head.  There were sixty of us in Mrs. Halstrom’s class, seated alphabetically by last name—Coyle, Davis, Dawson.  It must have been my second grade teacher, Sr. Marie Ancilla, who noted my lack of visual acuity, for it was in that year that I received a pair of glasses.  The moment I put them on registered in my life as one of the Glorious Mysteries—for the first time, I clearly saw individual blades of grass.
 
        Alas, my excuse for not writing as poetically as Margaret Renkl dissolved when she confessed to having an undetected lazy eye as a child.  One eye did not send the proper signals to her brain, rendering her eyesight possibly worse than mine.  What then enables her to see and, with such gentle strokes, to paint such beautiful pieces?  Perhaps her writing flows from her intentionality and the ensuing habits of being she has developed.  For the sake of my ego, I want to believe green-gray grace is involved in her writing process, completing her perceptions of the goodness/sadness/beauty/brutality of creation.  It is another Glorious Mystery in my life—her ability to so wondrously share her vision with us.