This goes back some years, but it sticks with me. I think I was sitting at one of the tables writing with a pencil; I’m sure I didn’t have a laptop then. It was common for me to make myself comfortable in the booth at the northwest window and pull some sheets of legal pad out of my pocket. There were always quite a few pencils lying around; I’d grab one and just start jotting down some thoughts. It wasn’t that easy, though, for I was never one to do a rough draft – it was kind of write it once and be done with it.

That would leave me sitting there just thinking a lot of the time or reading over what I had written in my head, listening for the rhythm of it. Or I would read the brand name on the pencils; mostly they were Ticonderogas and I would start thinking about Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. I was always fond of them – I think because they were rugged New Englanders. Or maybe the scenery had been attractive in the history book pictures. Once I came upon a Wallace Invader . . . took me years to realize it was named for William Wallace of Scottish fame (Braveheart).

This one day in the early fall – it was warm enough only the screen door separated the inside from the porch  – a lady I’d seen just enough to exchange pleasantries with at the local secondhand bookstore, came up and put her packages down by one of the rockers.

She was probably around 70, actually, probably on the plus side of it. I think the warmth of the day had caught her a little unawares and she went over to the chest pop machine that would eventually be hunkered down for winter, but still had plenty of sodas hanging by the neck in the slots that ran above the ice.

I got up and went out, got myself a drink and sat down in the chair next to hers. Started asking her about books and this and that and then I don’t know what happened but we were talking about the night her husband died. He had been working late and got home after the kids were asleep. He went into their room to kiss them goodnight and she said, “I heard something make a thud.”

She went in and there he was on the floor. It was before 911 – the time of her memory, not our talk – and I don’t remember who she called – an ambulance service . . . or maybe she called their doctor and he sent an ambulance. Yes, I think that was it. This has been a long time and I realize I have forgotten a lot of the details. They were overshadowed, I will tell you, by my memory of what she then told me.

She was in the waiting room at the ER and she heard someone say “DOA” and she knew. I can see her face telling me that.  Her minister came and drove her home and I guess he left. The kids were old enough they could stay alone; when she got home, they were waiting and she said she told him their dad was dead. She said to me, “We sat there on the sofa waiting for it to get light so we could call people.”

My God, to wait alone like that with two children – just the three of you in the night. I would have been calling everyone; I would not have cared who I awoke. I would have needed. I suppose a lot of things could be the predicate in that sentence. but it would have been the verb that cut. Yes, I would have needed. I would not have had the steel in my backbone.

We got off the subject somehow and talked a little more. She got up to leave and then came back and said, “I don’t know why I told you all that. I’m sorry.” I’m certain I assured her it was all right. I remember her smiling gently. I thought we would talk many times more, but I had to go away for awhile and then it was cold and I didn’t get out and I never saw her again.

I’m certain I could have asked around and discovered no doubt that she had taken a friend up on the offer to spend a couple of months – or three – staying in the home and  keeping it “lived in” while he/she  was gone somewhere. That was not an uncommon thing there . . . at that time. I didn’t make any inquiries. There had been that hour on the porch that fall day, and I left it at that. But, when I wake in the middle of the night, when I’m walking through a dark house, I sometimes remember her – sitting on a sofa with her children, waiting for the dawn.

Thomas Bickle is a little boy who hovers in my mind, but I have never met him. I have written about him before. He has a mother who is in my mind also; I have never met her, but in The Thomas Bickle Official Blog, she has shared their journey – the one she and Thomas and Daddy have been traveling.

There was bad news this fall and at Christmas when we put out our lights, I announced that these were “Thomas Bickle lights” and I think I wrote about it here. Then the holiday was over, but I wanted a light to shine for Thomas, and so one does in the western window in the old enclosed porch where I spend so much of my time. It has a soft golden glow and it burns day and night. Sometimes when I look at it and think of this little boy, my eyes fill and twinkling streams of light reach out and glimmer.

This mother, this Sarah, she is a tremendous person and I feel deeply for her. If thoughts help, she has the best I can send. And, Thomas, dear Thomas,  your candle burns too quickly, but its light will be forever.

This was nice. Last night just as I was going to sleep I thought about my husband’s great aunt Cuba and wondered what was her husband’s first and last name. And my brain was able to pull the information out of some crevasse. Good chemicals from the success uplifted my spirits.

It was a little tricky; I knew he name was a “bit” different, with the flavor of a foreign country to it, but just trying to think of those types of names didn’t yield anything. So I did the old alphabet trick. I got really teased by the “E” category, as if I were almost there. I forced myself to go on and as I hit  “I” territory, it came to me – Ivan. YES. YES. YES. YES. WOO-HOO.

But my body craved more of the good chemical of success and I thought . . . last name? last name?  last name?

The alphabet again. Trying to hear my husband’s voice in my head . . . almost saying the name.
Oh, gosh, I was getting toward the end – past the “R” section and the “T” faction and getting nervous . . . and then, then, my mouth said it and I heard my husband’s voice say it at the same time: Vilander. Ivan Vilander.

Not that this has much importance, if any, but it sure felt good to have some brain cells firing.