Tender Grace (24 page)

“That’s the first thing you said to me, you know: ‘You made it!’ ”

I finished John 13 this morning. It’ll give me something to ponder on my drive today. Jesus told his disciples he was giving them a new commandment: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Tall order it seems to me, loving as he loved. Yet I find myself giving it a try. And I believe it’s making a difference.

I gave Zack my e-mail address when he asked for it. That was nice of me.

My in-box is seldom empty anymore.

twenty-four

September 24

The inn, my room especially, couldn’t be more pleasant, and I’m sure I never would have thought to choose it; the number of lodgings and restaurants in the Monterey Peninsula seems infinite. I found a small church to attend and spent the rest of the day shopping on Cannery Row and visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I wasn’t prepared for such an enormous facility. I sat mesmerized, gazing at a twenty-eight-foot-high aquarium encasing a kelp forest. Except for the fact that I couldn’t feed peas to colorful little fish, sitting there was about as good as snorkeling. Better, since I didn’t have to do my hair again.

When I got back to the inn, I did my reading. Since my soul isn’t so shriveled anymore, I read quite a bit. Chapter 14 begins with such comforting words. “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Jesus tells us how that is possible: “Trust God; trust also in me.” Jesus also says here that he is the only way to the Father, which is offensive to those who embrace pluralism or prefer to chart their own course. But I do trust him, and I feel very much that I am following him to the Father.

My lifetime road trip!

I had six messages waiting for me when I checked my e-mail tonight, a shock to my system. But I found I was glad to get them all and didn’t mind answering any of them.

Katy said she and Mark had bought a dog for the kids, and though they had paid a good deal of money for it, the cute pup, unbeknownst to them and the breeder, had mange. To make matters much worse, after a day or two of cuddling him, so did they. But once they got a nasty pink lotion from the pharmacist and covered their bodies with it twice, and after they had washed everything that could be stuffed into a washer, the unfortunate incident was behind them. The puppy loved them, and except when he howled in his cage at night, they loved the puppy.

Molly reported that on the way to preschool last Friday, little Hank had said their car smelled like chicken and toots. Jada scowled at him across the backseat and said he was so gross. “You don’t know what you’re missing by not taking the kids to school,” Molly said.

I wrote them back and gave them a summary of my little adventures at Santa Cruz Island, the Santa Barbara Zoo, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where I had bought stuffed otters for the girls and penguins for the boys. “I’m enjoying these days,” I wrote, “finding in them what I’ve been calling ‘tender graces.’ But speaking of ‘tender graces,’ ” I added, “I need a grandkid fix. I’m longing to feel their sweet arms around me.”

Liz e-mailed from her daughter’s laptop and said Vernon was home and as ornery as ever. “Despite the scar down the middle of his chest, he’s feeling better than before the operation.” I thanked her for the update and said I hoped to check on Vernon myself the next time I was in the Phoenix area.

Willa wrote and said the buffalo wanted her to say hello. I wrote back and said wasn’t she glad she had bought the civil pair, who have time and an inclination for pleasantries?

Andrew wrote that Marlene had gone out to lunch with him today. “She’s agreed to come to dinner at the house next Friday night when Allie is home. I told her about your visit and what you said about the importance of the history she and I share. She seemed to find that interesting. I just thought you’d like to know.”

“I’m thrilled to know,” I wrote. “In case you haven’t gotten the hang of it yet, I’ll pray for your evening together.”

The last message was from Zack. “I’m planning on picking you up at one tomorrow unless you write back and tell me not to come.”

“Are you almost done with that book, or what?” I replied. “I love the inn, I’ve had a wonderful Sunday, and I’ll see you at one tomorrow.”

September 25

“I stopped by Rent-A-Roadster and picked this up for our drive,” he said as we approached a two-seat Mercedes in the parking lot. “You’re going to see this coast in style.”

I had heard of the 17-Mile Drive, and it was beautiful, but so was everything else we saw, and viewing it all from the convertible was nicer than seeing it from my car—a sunroof just can’t compare. Instead of going to a nice restaurant for dinner after a day driving over a good percentage of Highway 1, we stopped at a deli and put together a picnic and found a spot on the beach to spread out the blanket Zack had thought to bring. It might have been the best meal I’ve had on this trip.

After we had eaten and put everything away except the bottles left in the six-pack of Coke, we weren’t in a big hurry to leave the deserted beach. Cars zooming by in the distance and a tanker on the ocean far on the horizon reminded us we weren’t alone on the planet. But it seemed as though we were, and perhaps for this reason, Zack took me to the place in his heart he said he could seldom bear to visit, the last weeks with his wife, Maggie.

“Actually,” he began, “the last two months were bad. Maggie’s sister and Carley and the boys stayed with her while Jason and I were at work. Eventually, though, I’d come home after hours of meetings and wonder what in the world I was doing. By the last month, I’d go into the office very early and leave before lunch so that I could spend as much time with her as possible.

“She loved me despite my inattentiveness to her during much of our marriage, and lying beside her on those afternoons, my choices began to make me sick. I think we took two real vacations the whole time Jason was growing up. We even had to cancel our twenty-fifth-anniversary trip to Hawaii because of an emergency at work. It really was a crisis, and the company pulled out of it, but the trip was never rescheduled. A few weeks before she died, she said she hoped when she was gone that I’d do more with my life than run a company.”

Zack, using a stick he’d picked up on our trek through the sand, dug trenches next to our blanket as he talked. Part of me wanted to say,
Why don’t we drive through Pebble Beach
again?
But part of me thought this was another one of those divine appointments, and my job was to listen.

He tossed away the stick and turned his attention to the tanker, which wasn’t making much headway on the horizon. “I told her,” he continued, “that would be pretty ironic. And pointless. She said it might be ironic, but not pointless, not for me anyway. She said she wanted me to get much more out of life, that she had wanted that for a long time. Maggie was filled with hope and peace as she prepared to leave this world, things she must have cultivated for years while I worked ten hours a day, sometimes six days a week.

“I quit my job in June, a week before she died. I told her I had agreed to teach business courses at MU in Columbia the next fall. ‘I hope you don’t mind leaving St. Louis,’ I said. She said she didn’t mind at all.”

His wife’s saying, “I don’t mind at all,” when she knew she wouldn’t leave that bed did it for me. I grabbed my sweatshirt off the blanket between us and wiped away the tears streaming down my face. Zack smiled at me, tears brimming in his soft brown eyes, and took a deep breath, determined, it seemed, to finish this story.

“I was lying beside her when the time came for her to go.”

Ah,
I thought,
a tender grace.

“ ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, which could, and did, apply to so many things. She put her fingers to my lips to quiet me, and then she closed her eyes and gently slipped away.”

I handed him my sweatshirt, and we sat for a long while, handing it back and forth. It wasn’t as helpful as a box of tissues, but it sufficed.

“We
are
a pair,” I finally said.

He’s driving back down tomorrow, same time, to take me kayaking again. He said Monterey Bay is an even better place for it than Santa Cruz Island. He’s also making me a reservation at a hotel in downtown San Francisco for Wednesday and Thursday nights. I think he’s enjoying showing me the area.

I told him I had thought at one point that I might go all the way up the coast to Seattle, but I’ve decided to go no farther north. Seattle and Portland and Yellowstone can all wait for another day.

“Good choice,” he said. “Anyway, you couldn’t go all the way to Seattle without ferrying over to Victoria, you know.”

“That sounds lovely. But another time. I’m ready, eager even, to head east. Although I’m considering taking a slight detour to see southern Wyoming.”

Zack had spent unprecedented time with his grandsons in the last several months, so he understood my sudden and overwhelming desire to get back to my family.

“There’s no danger of home becoming a tomb again?” he asked.

“I hesitate to sound so confident, but I’m sure it won’t. It might be a refuge, as home should be, but not a tomb. I’m a mountain climber now, a mule rider, not a zombie.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I sat down this morning and mapped out the rest of the trip. I’m hoping to get to the end of John by the time I get home. When I let Tom’s Bible ride along with me, I had no idea how much it would affect this journey of mine.”

“Your husband would have known, I’ll bet.”

“Yes, and I
should
have.”

“How’s
Acts of Faith
coming?”

“Slow. Did you know that book has no stopping places? Chapters are often too long to work. It’s the only book I remember reading that required me to bookmark at a paragraph. I’m still working on it, though. But it’s John I’m committed to. Many things are contributing to my healing, but nothing more than that.”

Zack had pulled into the driveway of the inn to let me out before returning the roadster. “I’m sure you need to get on with it,” he said, “but I don’t look forward to your leaving.”

I turned to him and smiled. “Isn’t that something?”

I read from John 14 when I got back to the room. “I will not leave you as orphans,” Jesus told his disciples, and he promised to give them the Counselor, the Spirit that would abide with his disciples forever. He had come, and his followers experienced peace beyond understanding. I’ve had such a sense of the Spirit’s presence in my life during these weeks on the road, and I think it is he who is leading me toward home.

Gratitude is welling up again: Thank you, thank you, thank you!

September 26

We paddled through the kelp forest along Cannery Row. The exercise was invigorating, the scenery was beautiful, and the critters were delightful. We saw otters everywhere. I would never have done this alone. That’s what I told Zack while we ate an early dinner together.

“I can’t thank you enough for giving me the opportunity to explore Monterey Bay in a kayak.”

“It was my pleasure. You looked like you were having fun.”

“I had a blast, but I’m feeling guilty about your book.”