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“Please… sit for a while.” I stopped at the door, closing my eyes to the freedom just beyond, and turned back to the old woman still seated by the fireplace. The wood I had added to the fire hissed in acquiescence. I was tired from walking three miles (in the rain) to bring Miss Donna food and some heat. “Do you have to leave so soon?” She smiled as I slid onto the soft leather couch and traced a map on the creases and cracks in the leather. I didn’t come here to listen to her memoirs, I thought, and while she ladled honey into my mug of tea, I wrapped myself in the mohair blanket she made for me years ago. When I didn’t mind walking three miles in the rain. “Since you’ve been at the medical college, I just don’t see enough of you.” Stifling a sigh, I settled back on the sofa and thought about the neglected books sitting on the table in my kitchen. I have a test next week. I recalled an extensive list of minutiae I was expected to know by Tuesday, and I tried to force relaxation by inhaling the steam coming off of the warm tea. “I hope you don’t mind me asking you to visit.” I looked up from the fire and into Donna’s impassive eyes. “Of course not,” I replied, “It’s just that I’m very busy.” “Of course, of course.” She tucked the blanket underneath my arms. I read the atlas of veins and wrinkles on the back of her hand. “I won’t ask you to stay very long.” Donna leaned back in her chair and we sipped our tea in silence until the embers began to grow dim. “Do you remember when you first came out here to bring me firewood?” I remembered how she had smiled at me through the screen door when I was…how old was I?…. Mom sent me with canned apples and branches from the drooping limbs of the maple tree we pruned earlier that day. Miss Donna had invited me in and steeped eucalyptus leaves in water and honey while I started the fire. “I wasn’t as old then,” she said as my gaze came back into focus. I kindled more wood and settled back into my blanket. “You would stay with me for hours every time you came.” I watched the shadows in her face and waited as she finished her tea. I live a life redeemed, she sang, I’ve seen the sun set on my life and rise again. I searched for God in the dimly lit Grecian night sky, Given birth and watched my children die. I am not pure and set apart, not as much as I might seem. No, I am not worthy, but I live a life redeemed. She looked at me in the softly lit night, her eyes gleaming in the dark. She rose and pulled her chair closer and placed her hand over my heart. “I’ve seen the edges of the earth,” she said, “and helped to make them round; “Cried from joy so fierce I couldn’t speak and from pain I wouldn’t say aloud. “I saw the sunlight from a mountain top breaking darkness into morning, “I felt holy hands protect me and saw the angel, but not the warning. “I’ve made love under an opium blanket of dreams and mist and stars. “And, I have also trembled in a lonely chair wanting death instead of scars. “I fought the mystery in the center of my soul and wrestled the secret of my mind, “I paced through the maze of my existence until my journey turned into sweet wine. “I never had a daughter,” she said, and I felt Donna’s mind becoming still. She stared into the dying coals while a fancied fire burned the real. “When you first came to me,” she said “I marveled at how we were alike: “I saw in you the dreams of grief, the hope of newborn life. “In your soul resides a queen and in your heart a poor, frightened girl. “And, yet, it is only through strife and pain that a grain of sand becomes a pearl.” Then, Donna, my Doña, retired; I held her hand until night fully formed. I quietly closed the door to her home and turned around to look at my world. Though youth and age define us, Donna’s life will never die. Three miles I walked slowly (as it started to rain)… somehow I didn’t mind. Angela Hutcheson College of Medicine
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