Innerdialects

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6 pm brrr.

Our city looks like an Impressionist Painting of smog.

Jita peers back through the tiniest opening of her door. We used to be good friends, now she lets none of us in. The last time we tried, the eyes were like glass. Her nephew’s family visits on occasion. Jita lost her mind/ heart, in a disagreement with them. Ms. Ji and her husband had a multi cuisine restaurant. When NJ and I were just starting life, we had been to their “Gravy Bowl.” Decades later we meet here, in this neighborhood. Life is strange and beautiful like that.

Now the dark eyes are sunk in a paper thin face. I brought her a tiny plant in yellow jar and some soup. She lets us in. NJ makes small talk. She won’t take her eyes off the plant. “Come home,” I say with a small careful hug. She’s half my height, the silver hair grown to collar bones. “Heard you singing last week, Jita,” Nj says.

She looks to the shining floor as if the song lay there, then says one word at a time: the words arrive from somewhere near her toes. Tiny marble colored toes curled in the chill. “One day at a time, sweet Jesus...” her voice is barely audible. When she sings on other days it can reverb off her walls. Nj prays a quiet prayer for warmth and strength: a halting prayer,

“Father God, we thank You we could meet Jita. Thank You for keeping her and us all well. Please may it be warm tonight and may You touch us with health, in Jesus name we pray. Asking Healing of body, soul and mind.Bless our dear sister, and all her families. All our families…..”

Please may it be warm tonight. She’s even accepting the little room heater NJ offers to fit in. I remember a Christmas when she brought us a large round dish steaming with biriyani. Another time she brought in a garden pot that suited our palm sapling. Loneliness had never seemed to bother her. After her husband died, she planted guava and even tamed a jack fruit tree into obedience; helped chop a local drying mango tree, massaged a neighbor’s hurting foot, would drop in with spinach from her garden then mutter at how mean some one was but how they didn’t know any better. Then she lost it and wouldn’t see us.

Today the sun has come out in a whole different way. Today He let dusk light in thru a slightly open door. Will she let us in tomorrow ?

I miss my dear friend: this 4 ft angel in khaki linen pants and blue blouse with scalloped collar. Will she like an outing, will she visit ? There’s her birthday soon, my mind’s tripping. The last time I said I could spend dinner and the night at her sparely furnished apartment she said yes, but later the front door was locked tight. Once time there was hatred in her eyes, “Why you here!”

Not today. Today we’re all holding onto Ji’s song,

One day at a time Lord Jesus. 
That's all I'm asking of You. 
Just give me the strength to do everyday 
what I have to do. 
Yesterday's gone sweet Jesus 
and tomorrow may never be mine. 
Lord help me today, show me the way, 
one day at a time..." 

:

I think God’s just given me an assignment: not an easy one. There’s the thought that I have my hands full already, and some! But who argues with the Maker of miracles? Why’m I feeling so right already? As if my Equator had slipped an inch and has now set back in? As I post this, a star twinks through palm leaf outside. There was a bomb threat in one of our airports. Elsewhere there is other news. We cannot change much, but we/ I can reach into that Higher Power that changes things. I do not know any other way.

Sometimes like today, its a halting prayer, and I’m guessing – the kind that melts His heart, this Season and always.

Have a blessed Day, in Jesus