Easter – door open, inviting in the sun, we are weeding your new front lawn, three-by-three patch of grass and shrub, risen to the level of the third cement step and the bottom branches of bush planted too close to the townhouse you bought just two months ago. The suddenness of that wasp light-speeding from the gutter, defying physics like a miracle, nosing a way into your home. That look on your face when I pull the steel door shut. “Mom! I don’t have my keys!” You lean in front of the stainless knob. The stubbornness of it. “Wait,” I say, breaking off the end of a weak earring. “Try this.” You feed the keyhole my jewelry, curse, fingers coaxing tumblers. But the metal tip splits, lodges in the lock, jams the handle all together, and I mumble, “Well this is problematic.” Have I mentioned it was Easter? Have I mentioned the windows were sealed tighter than your angry lips? Have I mentioned you couldn’t recall the garage door code? Have I said I knew you thought me a fool, but I was well intentioned, protecting you even at this late age when you no longer believed in guardian angels or gratitude? That handyman we ended up calling. The one who drove an hour, somehow disassembled the doorknob, changed out the bolts, grease beneath his fresh cut nails. Telling us it was no problem at all. He’d left church to let us in, worked in a white Sunday suit, one knee on the welcome mat, the other on concrete. He opened the door for us. Saved us from ourselves. “No charge,” he said to you. “God told me I should come.”
Posted in Facebook Poetry
