and I want to see you
On the way home from school, we ramble down a country road sandwiched between two busy thoroughfares.
We leave the highway still feeling jostled by the cars and trucks that whizzed past while we waited to turn and wander down just this little stretch of peace before we turn again into the chaos. I always smile over the way this one road feels a whole world away from the speed and noise of the other two, as though it’s held carefully in some hollowed space in God’s hand. Mailboxes line one side, collecting in front of a small, red brick church with a stark white steeple and even the word chapel on the sign out front. In italics just below the name, the sign boldly offers, “God has not forgot.” It took me a while to stop thinking forgotten, with a smile, and a while longer to look up the passage listed below—Hebrews 6:10—so that I might understand just what remembrance of God’s these believers have chosen to celebrate. As it turns out, it is the perfect promise to inhale in the middle:
God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.
It feels as though the people who live on this road are all older, because almost every day I see two silver-haired women standing in the front yard talking with the mail in their hands, or I watch a bent man on ahead cross the street to get his mail. I catch a flash of white blowing just under his cap as we pass and he raises his hand. On one side, a couple of horses meander through a paddock in front of a worn red barn, stopping to chew on hay heaped up by the fence. The hair from their tails lifts in the breeze and settles over the planks of old wood while they eat. I can imagine the sound of the rain on the barn’s tin roof even on the days when the sun glints on the dull surface of it. In the Spring, wildflowers bloom tall and lanky in the grass on the other side of the road and in the blank open places between the houses; houses which all look neatly kept and rich with stories. In one front yard I see a decorative well, in another a small cemetery that always looks tended and clean. Sometimes I wonder who gathers there in front of the stones to rake leaves and plant flowers and remember. Between a few of these old homes, I can see a pond just a short walk away, and in the early morning, sometimes fog collects just above the glassy water like a congregation of wispy spirits. In one back yard not far from the water, woody vines have been twisted into an arbor. Sometimes, as we pass through, I want to just stop my car in the middle of the road and breathe. I want to linger in the hollowed out space.
Riley sits in the back seat on the way home because we carpool with one of her best friends, and Riley’s friend says she’ll be all alone back there without Riley sitting beside, looking out the window and touching the bun on the back of her head with one hand. They are a complementary pair, both held slightly apart from the clamor of the world by their individual challenges. Riley is quiet and thoughtful, absorbing everything she sees and hears and feels and smells without comment, and her friend chatters in one run-on sentence, grabbing breaths before issuing a stream of rapid-fire questions: “Riley, what did you do in in PE today? What did the PE teacher say about ME? When was the last time you saw one of our old teachers? I’d really like to go see them sometime. Hey, maybe we could do that one afternoon, go see them? What will you do this afternoon? Do you have any homework??”
I’m not sure the answers to the questions really matter, since both the questions and their answers are generally similar from day to day. For these two beautiful girls, conversation always seems to be less about the words and more about the expression of friendship. I listen and smile as Riley answers quietly, just the question asked, in the minimum number of words necessary. We see this as a limitation, her reluctance to multiply words, but God has said that “the one with knowledge uses words with restraint (Proverbs 17:27).” Whenever possible, Riley just says, “Mmmhmm, yea,” her tone sweet and unruffled. Despite her quiet nature, all these repeated questions don’t ever seem to register with her as an imposition on her thoughts or her time.
“So, what were you doing this morning when we got there to pick you up?” Riley’s friend asks suddenly, a new question, and immediately I wonder where we’re headed with this interrogation. It’s a suspicion, a skepticism only I entertain. Riley excels at accepting what is without looking for hidden agendas.
“I was eating breakfast,” Riley says, and in my mind, I see her grabbing her pills from the napkin and swallowing them quickly, one foot already moving her out of the chair. I see her bending quickly to scoop up a last bite of eggs, to swallow a last gulp of juice. I braided her hair that morning while she ate, wrapping the pieces into a bun that looks like a seashell, pinning it in place with bobby pins I grabbed from a jar beside Riley’s elbow. I see Riley checking the chart on the refrigerator to see if she needs her gym clothes. I hear her mentally reviewing her list of responsibilities as she gathers her dishes, balls her napkin in her fist.
“Why weren’t you peeping out the window, waiting for me?”
I bristle. I know why. Riley gets up early so she can wake up slow, and then she hurries, always making sure she checks off her lists before school.
Riley pauses, not sure exactly how to reply.
“Why weren’t you? Why weren’t you peeping out the window? I like to see you peeping out the window.” Riley’s friend asks her questions without animosity or accusation, without the layer of suggested failure that might simmer below if the words had passed through other lips. Instead, behind her words lilts a simple enthusiasm for being anticipated, watched for, waited upon. It’s such a beautiful thing, the way their friendship is insulated like this road, a place of possibility held outside of our disbelief, protected by a purity of heart the rest of us interpret as naivete. The parts of them we consider weakness really are a great strength.
“Well, I–uh–I don’t know, I was just eating my breakfast. That’s what I was doing.” Riley answers without the slightest hint of defensiveness or change in her tone or expression. Her pause is more about checking her mind to see if there’s more that she might say to answer accurately, some other explanation for why she wasn’t standing at the window. She is at once completely comfortable with herself and completely at ease with everyone else. She feels no need to defend, just the desire to be completely truthful.
“Oh,” her friend says lightly. “Well, tomorrow I want to see you peeping out the window, okay?” Listening to them, I realize that this isn’t pressure or ultimatum or if you don’t I’ll think you don’t care about me. It’s only an expression of sweet and honest hope, with enough grace for believing if not tomorrow, perhaps the next day or the next.
Riley nods, accepting this. It’s as though all she hears is I want to see you, even though what she says is, “Mmmhmmm, yea. Okay. Tomorrow I will peep out the window.” I look in the mirror to evaluate my daughter’s expression, to see if she realizes that tomorrow morning will actually not be different, that she will still be gulping down her pills and swallowing the last of her eggs and balling her napkin in her fist when I see them drive up and call out to her. But the expression on her face suggests openness and possibility. She believes she might be able to fulfill this request. She intends to try.
It occurs to me that driving down this road, in this carved out space where bees flit over clover and sun bleaches fields of grass, such things do feel possible. Simple, pure-hearted, faithful friendship feels as real as the newly plowed fields with their neatly rumpled rows. It feels possible to hear what is beyond spoken words, to believe in relationship as fact, to accept what is without looking for hidden agendas. And in God’s hands, “all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).”
We turn off and head back into the chaos of cars that will take us home. It isn’t until we pull into the drive in front of her house that Riley’s friend revisits this “peeping out the window” conversation. Nearly every school day for the last two years, this friend, as she has gathered her book bag and scrambled from the car, has reminded Riley to “be on time” in the morning. It’s part of how she says goodbye, something Riley has come to expect. Riley always says, “Okay, I will,” giggling, stopping to wave happily as she climbs into the front seat. But today, Riley’s friend adds something to her usual admonition. Today, she says, “Now Riley, be on time in the morning! I want to see you peeping out the window, okay?” I’m thinking, she doesn’t have time to be peeping out the window. She doesn’t have time. But Riley smiles wide, and a giggle begins to spill and spread through her words as she lifts her hand to wave, as she calls back, “Okay, I will! I’ll be at the window!” It isn’t a lie. She truly intends to be. She really believes tomorrow she’ll manage it.
But in the morning, Adam is the one peeping out the window. He has the time, and he loves friends, especially his sisters’ friends. Riley sits at the table spooning eggs into her mouth, and I braid her hair and press it into a seashell shape on her head while she eats, grabbing the pins, and Adam opens the blinds so that he can see. And he waits. It stuns me still, the way Adam responds to things he shouldn’t know, as though he listens far better than the rest of us. Adam wasn’t in the car to overhear this conversation, and Riley hasn’t spoken of it, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him plant himself there that way to wait. I finish the braid and move back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room where Adam stands. I check the road, check the time, give Riley updates as she hurries. When they drive in, Adam waves, standing just behind the blinds, and he repeats her name. Hi. Hi. Hi.
Riley rushes and I open the door and wave so that they’ll know we see. Riley’s friend rolls down her window. “Where’s Riley?”
“She’s coming,” I say. And then I point to where Adam stands behind the blinds. “Adam’s waving at you, telling you ‘hi.'” I want her to know that someone was waiting, someone was peeping out the window, even if it wasn’t Riley. Sometimes, we all miss the gift, failing to value the same offering when it’s offered in another way or from another one.
“Where is he? I can’t see him,” she says. So, I turn to Adam and motion him toward the open door, and he stands on the threshold calling her name, smiling all teeth, waving his hand. She giggles, surprised and delighted. But it is still Riley she loves best. It’s Riley she wants to see.
Riley shuffles past me, offering me a quick kiss, lifting her book bag and settling it against her back, gathering lunch box and gym bag in hand. “Have a good day,” I call after her, and just like that, she’s gone, sneaking a glance at her hair in the car window as she walks toward them and climbs in. And as they drive away, I hear her friend say, “Why weren’t you peeping out the window? I want to see you peeping out the window.”
And I see Riley smile over I want to see you, and nod yes, and even though they drive away and the sound of her voice is lost in the wind, I can feel her sweet words, the faithful way she softly says, “I will. Tomorrow I will,” in the absence of self-defense.
And so I stand on the front porch, watching the car turn off the street, watching the morning sun streak the sky in soft pastels, thinking for a moment about Relationship; how God created it to be a sacred place, a stretch of peace insulated and simple, a road in the middle for breath and true faith and real love, a space for sacrifice and perseverance. I stand thinking of the sad, ill thing that robs most of us of the offering of grace, namely our reliance on and protection of ourselves. Our pride, our comparison, our selfishness, all these taint our giving and receiving from each other. We shy away from honestly expressing our feelings by sharing what we need, or more accurately, our specific hopes. I hope you will be waiting for me, peeping out the window. We read things into words, expressions, behaviors, thinking that we are expert interpreters of each other. We are instantly defensive. We hear do the impossible thing instead of I hope you’ll be looking for me. We fight over words, unable to hear the feelings that gather beyond them. And yet these two girls go on, fast friends and feeling equally loved, both different enough from this world not to be so terribly ensnared, pure enough to simply accept what the other can offer. The two of them teach me, shining bright light on my shadows. And so, I stand in the morning light, absorbing the sky, whispering just this:
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me (Psalm 51:10). Please, make me like a child (Matthew 18:3).
