the vine

The brush, she, my sister, my friend, dips in vibrant pink, like satin ribbons or the tender curve of a lip, and then deftly applies, with the flick of her wrist, a twist, the kind of poetry artists use to produce a delicate petal, cupped and open, waiting, maybe, for rain.

I watch her work, amused to note that creation of any kind no matter the medium—paint, objects, words, yes, even people—always seems to be a matter of elegant blending. My friend has mixed a darker shade, a lighter one, and with these she begins to cultivate depth, a relationship between the flower and the elemental things that sustain its hypothetical life.

We are painting a vine, my sister-friends and I, all pulled up around our table for a book club feast, and there are snacks on plates and footed water glasses–deep river blue, beaded with droplets, plates of paint in bloomy colors, and water jars for our brushes. We laugh, joking that one wrong move could land the brushes right in our drinking water, dabbing those brushes into puddles of paint, swabbing petals and curling stems on a length of brown paper. It could be the naked bare inside of a paper bag, that paper, the kind of thing we once used to cover schoolbooks back when schools used actual books, but now, beneath our hands, it becomes a canvas for collaborative art.

Here we come with something like twenty years of shared history and laugh lines sprouting at the corners of our eyes, with no need any more to tuck in our eccentricities, and still, we’re growing into something together.

Tonight, we gather around the table and this curling vine, blooming beneath our hands, to discuss Kate Quinn’s book The Briar Club, a novel about how a group of very different women living together in a boarding house became a family of friends, the story set against a backdrop of historic fear.  Those boarding house women had a supper club, ate a weekly dinner of surprising meals thrown together in a kitchenette really comprised of nothing more than a hot plate on top of a compact refrigerator, finding somehow enough space in a closet of a room to be together, and there they painted a vine like ours while they ate, a vine that grew along the walls and around the windows and doors of the home they shared, expanding with their friendship.  Their flowers looked as diverse as they were in personality and perspective, some soft and broad, others tiny and profuse, but somehow all those varying blooms looked cohesive on the vine. Together, they made something more beautiful.

I can’t help but smile now, because the same is true of our blooms and our vine, of our friendship, and when we finish the vine, I will hang it somewhere so I can see it, so I can remember how chosen families are made, how unity and friendship really happen.

We lean over the paper listening to each other, creating something as we nibble on the food that sits just west of our elbows, lightly sharing the heavy details of our lives, remembering we can belong together and still be wildly different.

Something about the vine connecting, the vine manifesting the harmony of varied beauty, making artists of all of us while we talk, makes me think of the vine Jesus described to His disciples just before He went to the cross.

I am the vine, and you are the branches.

There is nothing quite so luscious, so tangibly rich and promising as a strong vine plump with fruit, and with scarce times coming, He wanted them to remember, under the most scattering circumstances, that they were still connected to the sustaining strength of Him and in Him also to each other, that they could choose to stay that way, even as they went sprawling. I wear a ring on my finger, a vine encircling, to remember that it is the vine that satisfies and the vine that brings us together, the vine that promises life and fruit for the branches, creating something greater than our individuality, becoming the basis for a shared life.

In the same way, simple, surprising food—the manna, and then, the bread, the wine, or in our case tonight, the water, the meatballs, the strawberry fool—turns into a feast by way of fellowship, relationship, and not the other way around.  It isn’t the food that makes the meal, but what it represents.

I am painting a broad green leaf, baby new and fragile, when Riley’s manager calls, and seeing his name pop up on my phone, I glance up at the clock, remembering that yes, she would still be at work now, but only just.

“It’s Riley’s manager,” I say, so my friends will understand why I dunk my brush into a water jar and leave them, sliding back my chair to walk into another room, but in retrospect, I don’t know why I bothered to leave the table.  It’s not as if my friends, my sisters, could hear that and then just resume their discussion.  They paint, listening out of love for Riley, for us, and the vine keeps blooming, keeps living and bearing fruit, as I keep breathing into the phone, even though the anticipation of some new pain seems to have stolen my breath.

I wind quickly through civilized greetings with her manager, but what I want to say into the phone is just, what’s happened–is she okay, because why else would he be calling me now?

“I got a call from one of the supervisors,” he says, “and she says Riley seems to have had some sort of episode.  That’s all I know.  She’s on her way to Riley and will call you when she knows more. I’ve given her your phone number and just wanted you to anticipate the call.”

“Okay, thank you,” I say, haltingly, my mouth suddenly dry, because he has stopped my questions on the tip of my tongue, and all I can do, at least for now, is wait. My mind though, it races through the corridors of the hospital, trying to locate my daughter.

Where are you? I am thinking, my spirit a pulsing, calling thing, reaching for her.

I go back to the table and tell my friends what they could not hear of the other side of the conversation, picking up my paint brush again because what else can I do but return to the vine?

I mix a blushing orange on my paper plate and start on another petal, velvety, bright. We bend and paint and wait, staying, and I ask them a question about the book—what impact does McCarthyism have on the lives of the characters in this novel or something like that, and we pretend to continue, but really, I feel it, we are all just waiting for my phone to ring again.  Talk about scattering circumstances. I glance around the table at our brushes flicking and dotting, noticing that even distracted we are all still connected, our attention trained on the vine, our individual hands and fingers moving over it at once.

Waiting doesn’t diminish those connected to the vine, but instead we are enlarged in the waiting, because in every circumstance, unified and sustained by vital relationships, we keep on bearing fruit.

Finally, my phone rings and again I slide my chair back and walk away, but again I don’t really know why, because you cannot, when you care for other people, when your life is connected to theirs, just go on as though nothing significant is happening to them. Love and unity, these chosen family ties, turn individual experiences into shared history.

Riley’s supervisor, as it turns out, still knows very little about what happened, only that someone had some concern that Riley might faint, and as is always the case with someone who has seizures, the potential of a seismic event caused them to send Riley to the emergency room. The supervisor stands outside the triage door waiting, temporarily locked out; she’ll have to call me back.

Jesus knew, as He drew Himself as the vine for His disciples, that they would be waiting those days His body lay still in a tomb, waiting again for Him to meet them, waiting again for Him to return.

My friends are kind.  They lift their paint brushes from our brown paper trellis and wait expectantly as I return to the table. After I tell them what the supervisor said, they ask if I need them to leave so we can tend to things with Riley, and I don’t know, I just don’t know, because I don’t even really understand the specifics of this mysterious episode, which could still turn out to be nothing. But I am thinking only no, please stay and wait with me, and in my mind, questions tumble furiously.

I settle heavily in my chair, silently praying as I pick up my paint brush to create another bloom, fresh and strong, infused with light just like my Riley, who will be, I’m certain of it, blooming, even in this confusion. And when Riley’s supervisor calls a second time, still having received no useful information, she passes the phone to Riley, whose kind and happy voice carries over space and miles, from the emergency department to our kitchen table, the connection a bright line thrumming.  She sounds, as she always does, full of light, like she’s herself and okay and remaining with the rest of us, and so I am brimming with thankfulness, if still baffled about what happened, even as the supervisor gets back on the line and explains that since they admitted Riley in emergency, Kevin or I will need to come sign her out before she can return home. When I asked, Riley, seemingly as baffled as me, can only guess, “I had a seizure, maybe,” before assuring me she’s doing just great.

So, while Kevin prepares to go and retrieve our daughter, I return to the life-giving fellowship of the vine, and thinking of Riley, I dip my brush in a pool of golden sunshine yellow and twist my fingers around another bloom.