Feathers of Hope, page 3
“I hear his vulnerability in this,” Kit said. “Maybe even shame.”
Wren nodded. “I get it. I’ve felt the same impulse to hide so I don’t have to give explanations to anyone. It’s easier that way.” When Kit handed the phone back to her, she set it on the coffee table. “Dawn told me at our last appointment that she’d love to see me try to make new friends and spend time with people my own age. But I told her it takes way too much energy. I was thinking about it today, how exhausting molting can be. I feel like I need to concentrate just on doing my work until my feathers grow back.”
Kit wasn’t going to contradict her, but she was glad her counselor had started nudging her out of her comfort zone. “‘Until’ is a good word,” she said. “I hear expectant hope in that word, like you’ve turned a corner toward something new.” When Wren looked confused, Kit said, “I heard you say, ‘until my feathers grow back.’”
“Oh!” Wren smiled slightly. “Thanks for catching that. I guess that’s progress.”
“Great progress. And if Dawn thinks you’re ready for a new challenge, take that as a word of hope too.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Wren replied, but she didn’t sound convinced.
Kit decided not to push. “Thinking of birds and molting,” she said, “my grandmother—the same one who sang the ‘Daisy, Daisy’ song—had a parakeet named Socrates. Smart little thing. She used to take him out of his cage when I visited, and he’d do somersaults right in my hand. He could say my name too. ‘Kitty-kitty-kitty,’ he’d say, and we’d laugh.”
Wren drew her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them, her gaze fixed on Kit.
“Whenever he molted, he’d get these sharp little stubs poking up through his skin—pinfeathers, they’re called—and they were itchy and uncomfortable for him, like little spikes. Pinfeathers are really delicate. They have sheaths on them—kind of like a toenail—to protect all the new growth. But eventually, that protective cover has to chip off so the feather can expand and unfurl. So little Socrates would preen and preen and try to chip it away, but he couldn’t preen the top of his head. So as those pinfeathers grew strong, my grandmother would gently stroke them so the new growth could emerge.”
Kit hadn’t thought about that in years, how Mom-Mom would sing to him while she stroked him, and that little bird would nuzzle against her hand as if he knew she was doing something important to help care for him.
“What you said about molting, Wren—how exhausting it is—that’s what Mom-Mom used to say too. She always said Socrates needed extra-loving care while he molted and rested. So I would sometimes sit beside his cage and read to him while he sat on his perch, and I’d watch for those little spikes to turn into feathers.” She paused. “They always did.”
In the silence, Kit listened to the hum and slosh of the washing machine, her thoughts wandering to New Hope and the board and her retirement. After a while, Wren leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks for giving me a safe space where my pinfeathers can emerge. And for being patient with me in the process.”
Kit slowly rubbed her short white hair. “I’m going through my own molting process these days, so thanks for being patient with me too.”
As a breeze strummed melodic broken chords on a wind chime suspended from the eaves, Kit gazed out the patio door into the darkness, thinking of the bald cardinal and Wren and the Willow Springs residents and Mara and the Crossroads staff and residents and volunteers and all the vulnerable, prickly places of discomfort, loss, and change. And she stroked the top of her head again.
3
As soon as she finished her shift at Willow Springs on Friday afternoon, Wren biked to New Hope. “People are sending in donations for a retirement gift, right?” she asked Gayle, the part-time receptionist, after greeting her in the office.
Nodding, Gayle removed a manila folder from her desk drawer. “I’m keeping track of everything in here. Almost everyone has RSVPed yes, so the chapel will be completely full.”
“That’s great,” Wren said. She hoped Kit would think it was great too. “So, is the board planning to give her a check, or are they also buying gifts?”
“Not sure. Why?”
“I had an idea.” Wren peered into the lobby to make sure Kit wasn’t nearby. “I found out last night that she’s always wanted a bicycle built for two.”
“Seriously? Do they still make those?”
“I already went online and found a couple different options.” She had even managed to find the right color.
“Does Sarah know?”
“That she wants one?”
“That you want to get her one.”
“No.”
“Oh.” Gayle slid her palm across the file folder. “I don’t know, Wren. I mean, if she were my mom . . .”
“Lots of older people ride bikes. I see them all the time. And it’s not like we’re talking about a mountain or racing bike. I’ve ridden tandems before. I could take the lead. They’re not hard once you get the hang of it.”
“But if she fell and broke a hip or—”
“Okay.” Wren held up her hand. She didn’t need someone planting that kind of anxiety in her. “Never mind. Forget I mentioned it.”
“I just worry that—”
“It’s fine.”
Gayle tucked the folder back into the drawer. “I’m sorry to squash your enthusiasm, Wren.”
“No big deal.” She picked up her backpack. “I’ve got to start cleaning. Don’t mention the bike idea to Kit, okay?”
Gayle mimed zipping her lips.
If the bicycle couldn’t be a gift from the group, Wren thought as she rounded the corner to the hallway, it could be a gift from her. And only she and Kit would need to know about it.
That’s the spirit, Wrinkle, Casey replied.
She stopped so fast, she nearly tripped.
Seven months after his death, he could still startle her with a voice that sounded so clear, she could have sworn he was right beside her.
Or behind her.
That was where Casey would often sit when they rented a tandem bike in Muskegon on a Saturday afternoon and cycled along the lakeshore. Though he would joke about taking the backseat so she could chauffeur him for a change, he also knew how to encourage her to take the lead. When he was well, Casey was her champion.
Smiling to herself, she imagined how the two of them might have appeared to anyone watching them ride together, him towering over her with his six-foot-three lanky frame, his wavy red hair flowing behind him, while she directed all her five-foot-two strength into pedaling. It had taken them a few tries to find their rhythm on their first ride—and a fair share of their typical sibling-style bickering—but once they learned how to synchronize their feet, they were off and away.
Dawn was right, Wren thought as she gathered her cleaning supplies from the closet. There came a day in the grief process when memories of a loved one brought a smile before a tear. Maybe she was making progress after all.
She inserted her earbuds, found Don McLean’s “Vincent” on her phone, and hit repeat. Then she began dusting his paintings, watching to see which one would catch her attention for prayer.
But the one that edged into her thoughts didn’t hang on these walls: La Berceuse, Vincent’s portrait of his friend Augustine Roulin rocking a cradle. That was the one that had provoked Casey the last day she saw him alive.
She glanced at the closed door of her painting studio, a classroom Kit had given her permission to use. Last December, she and Casey had stood at her worktable, studying the various portraits of Augustine in her art book and arguing about Vincent’s style until he muttered something about mothers being impossible to please and fatherhood being “overrated.” She hadn’t understood then what he meant. She hardly understood now, not with all the mysteries still swirling around his life and death. Casey had died with secrets. And as Kit had reminded her multiple times, both in letters and conversations, sometimes you had to bury and relinquish your unknowing so you could move forward with grief.
“Why does that lady make you sad?” Phoebe had asked her last spring when they saw one of Vincent’s portraits of Augustine in Chicago. While the rest of their family toured a potential college for Olivia, she and Phoebe spent a few hours at the Art Institute.
Wren was so taken aback by her little sister’s gifts of perception that she wasn’t sure how to answer. So she deflected the question. “Does she make you feel sad?”
“Yep.” Phoebe gripped Wren’s hand. “Because she looks mad.”
“Does she?”
“Yep.” She stood on her tiptoes for a closer look. “Maybe the baby’s crying too much.”
“Maybe,” Wren had replied. “Babies do cry a lot sometimes.”
She wiped a smudge from the frame around Two Cut Sunflowers. Casey wouldn’t have had much patience for a crying baby. But even a colicky newborn couldn’t have been the reason why he had abandoned Brooke and their daughter, Estelle. Casey had often been selfish, but he wasn’t cruel. Something had pushed him over the edge. Something had triggered a bipolar episode. Maybe Brooke was abusive, just as he’d claimed. Far easier to believe the worst about someone she had never met—and would likely never meet—than to believe the worst about the very first friend she had made after moving from Australia to America when she was eleven. The best friend who had been like a brother.
Except, a best friend wouldn’t have concealed the fact that he had become a dad.
A wave of anger swept over her.
Betrayed. That was still the best word to describe how she felt, even all these months later. In May, when she knelt beside Kit in the New Hope courtyard garden to bury her “I forgive you” letter to Casey and to plant the seeds she had plucked from his memorial sunflowers, she thought she was also burying her anger and bewilderment. How naive she had been.
“Forgiveness is a process,” Dawn often reminded her. Like grief. And her capacity to feel anger and sorrow without being consumed by them was evidence of her movement forward.
But if she knew precisely what she was forgiving him for—if she could only know the truth about what he did and why—she might truly release him.
Cloth and spray bottle in hand, she opened her studio door and walked to the window overlooking the courtyard. She had hoped the sunflowers would be in full bloom for Kit’s retirement party, and the timing seemed about right.
She removed her earbuds and listened to a full-crested cardinal singing on the rose arbor. Maybe she could paint two versions: the bald and the full. Shedding and renewal. Loss and hope. In fact . . .
She thought about Vincent and his plans to flank Augustine with his sunflower paintings: a triptych showing an ordinary saint poised between flaming flowers that brightly blazed, all three paintings gleaming with the radiance of God.
She could paint a triptych of cardinals. Life before molting. Life during molting. Life after molting. The cardinal before the loss would not be identical to the one after. How could it be? Struggle left its mark. Even if new feathers emerged.
Even when, she reminded herself. She needed to keep practicing hope. The evidence of things unseen.
“There you are!” Kit called from the doorway.
Startled, Wren spun around. “Yep, I’m here.”
Kit gestured at the spray bottle. “Maybe you can clean your studio later. There’s quite a lot to be done before the retreat tomorrow.”
Wren’s face flushed. “I know, I wasn’t going to clean in here. I just came in to look outside for a second.”
“Ah, okay. I noticed the trashcans are full, so—”
“I know. I’ll empty them.” Like I always do, she added silently.
“Thank you, Wren.”
Wren waited until she heard her footsteps recede before stepping into the hallway to resume her slow dusting of Vincent’s art.
That’ll do for now, Kit told herself later that afternoon. She saved the retreat document on her office computer and looked at the open Bible on her desk.
When she had prayed about good last words to offer the community, the theme of stewardship had come to mind: stewarding love, stewarding affliction, stewarding grace. As you have been loved, love. As you have been comforted, comfort. As you have been forgiven, forgive. That was what she would present on the next three Saturday mornings. Unless the Lord redirected her, which he was always free to do.
Love is patient, she read from 1 Corinthians 13 again. Kind. Not envious or boastful, arrogant or rude, self-seeking or irritable or resentful. Each description from Paul merited a lifetime of pondering. During one of the personal reflection breaks, she would invite the group to meditate on each word and consider how God had loved them in those ways, to practice receiving that kind of generous love from him before considering what it meant to extend that kind of love to others. Especially to those who were impatient and unkind, envious and boastful, arrogant and rude, self-seeking, irritable, and resentful.
She rubbed her temples slowly. Long-tempered. That was the meaning of the Greek word Paul used for “patient,” the opposite of short-tempered flares of anger and passion. Long-suffering fortitude extended a long way and a long time over a long haul. She would emphasize to the group that this kind of steadfast perseverance in loving others was a gift of the Spirit and a fruit of abiding in God’s extravagant love. She would remind them what Jesus had said: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.” Savoring that kind of divine love took practice. And time.
“I’m heading home, Katherine,” Gayle called from the doorway. “Unless there’s anything else you need from me.”
Looking up from her Bible, she mentally ticked off the to-do list. “Prayer handouts are printed? Registration list is complete?”
“It’s all on my desk, ready to go.”
“That’s great, Gayle. Thank you.” She would call it a day too.
After Gayle left, she went to find Wren, whose cart was parked outside the women’s bathroom. Not wanting to startle her, Kit called her name from the hall.
Wren appeared, her forearms concealed in yellow rubber gloves. “Heading home?”
“Yes. I’ll pick up something quick and easy for dinner on my way. Do you have much left to do?”
“A bit. What time is it?”
“Just after four.”
“Okay,” Wren said. “I’ll see you there.”
On her way back to her office to collect her purse, Kit paused in front of one of Vincent’s sowers. She might as well take an unhurried moment for the kind of prayer that had become so life-giving to her over the past few months.
Folding her hands, she let her gaze rove over the painting until it landed on the man’s large open hand scattering the seeds from his satchel. An abundance of them.
She leaned in for a closer look.
How differently she had approached planting the sunflower seeds with Wren, depositing each one in soil she had amended so they would have the best chance for growth. That kind of deliberate care had felt like faithful, responsible stewardship of what had been entrusted to her.
But this sower seemed blissfully unconcerned about where the seeds might land.
She pictured herself in the painting, trailing behind him with her own satchel, stooping to cover up with earth the seeds he had carelessly flung. She imagined herself kneeling in the dirt, then reaching into her pouch to remove a solitary grain. After carefully burying it, she patted the ground in satisfaction and offered a prayer for its growth.
But the sower tossed seed by the handful and laughed when the wind caught and swirled it, depositing it in places where she was certain it would never take root. The birds were bound to find those seeds and swallow them. And what about the rocky soil or the thorns that would rise up and choke vulnerable seedlings?
“Don’t you care about the harvest?” she asked him.
In reply, he gently pried open her fist and poured a mound of seed into her palm, some of it falling to the dirt. Then he blew on her hand, and the seeds floated on his breath to scatter to places unseen, to land on soil that may or may not be prepared. “Listen,” he said with mirth in his voice, “a sower went out to sow.”
4
When Sarah Kersten entered the New Hope office at eight fifteen on Saturday morning, her mother was muttering at the printer, hands on her hips.
“Misbehaving?” Sarah asked.
Her mom grimaced. “Me? Or the printer?”
Sarah laughed and set her purse on Gayle’s tidy desk. “Either. Both.” She kissed her mom on the cheek, then shooed her out of the way. “What’s the problem with it?”
“It won’t do what I want it to do.”
What a succinct summary of the human dilemma, Sarah thought. “What do you want it to do?”
“Print, just print. It’s a simple Word document, no different from what I’ve printed hundreds of times.”
Sarah examined the printer, then pushed the power button. The machine hummed.
“Good grief,” her mother said. “I’m sorry.”
“No problem.” Sarah checked the paper tray to make sure it was loaded. “Gayle must have switched it off.”
“I don’t know why she would have done that, no reason to do that.”
Sarah stared at the large blue light on the machine. “No harm done, Mom.”
“You’re right. No harm done.” As the printer spat out pages, Kit gathered them one by one, her wrinkled, age-spotted hands trembling ever so slightly.
“I’ll get those,” Sarah said. “Sit down a minute and take a deep breath.”
Obeying, she sank into a chair with a sigh.
Sarah monitored the printer’s progress. “Gayle’s not helping today?”
“No. She’s got a bridal shower. Her son’s getting married in a couple of weeks.”
“What about Wren?”
“She’s going to the nursing home today.”
