The Shape They Are

Photo by Alex Wolf

as he left the sidewalk and 
darted for the dark lattice door
the old barbers abandoned their patrons 
each in their chair 
and opened it to shout “ey man!” to my toddler son
as they do every time we pass by. 
Big Don, who has all his teeth 
except the ones up front, 
gave his widest, most satisfied smile
as he knelt down and extended a treasure to my child:
a 10-cent peach-flavored lollipop,
which the little hand received with anticipation. 
they each went on waving to us (me & my son) 
until we were 25 paces down the pavement,
their half-trimmed customers still patiently watching 
in their plastic capes. 

waiting. 

for hours we swept the sidewalks with our feet, 
rounding the neighborhood, moving directionless 
through that sacred season when the trees remain green 
but the dead leaves have begun their descent— 
a boundless, crumpled blanket of brown & yellow paper beneath us. 
my son kept squatting down
to inspect the variety,
occasionally tapping one with his peach-flavored sucker
to see if they might make a sound. 

I realized that, had he asked me, “what shape is a leaf?”, 
I would have had no answer. 
each one seems different. 
they are the shape that they are. 

we passed through a cemetery
and kicked freshly-fallen acorns along the path. 
these, too, my son tapped with the sugary surface of his lollipop,
as if knighting them. 
I kept wiping the dirt off the candy,
kindly instructing him to simply “eat it. please.” 
…but he insisted, and went on tapping — 
he tapped on a 19th century stone wall.

the day before, while I was at work
a friend had texted me to express how disappointed he was with me. 
each word made a small wound in my side
...but I replied, with gratitude for his honesty
and requesting that we meet up to talk. 
I waited.
there was no response. 

an hour later, to the minute 
a different friend — one from college 
texted me out of the blue. 
he was getting divorced. 
he was distraught. disillusioned. 
he didn’t know how to tell his 3 kids. 

at nightfall, 
my wife and I were standing in the kitchen 
and she put down her phone
after a long, long call. 
“…she miscarried again.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. 
“again”
after all the waiting. 

but this was all the day before. 
and so, 
I, too, tapped the 19th century stone wall
with one of my knuckles 
just to feel the hard surface 
and to know 
it would not move. 

I wished that our commonplace journey might never end. 
it was—for me—a refuge
a pause on the soundtrack of a thousand misfortunes: 
that steady stream of days and months and years 
we each spend struggling under the weight 
of unfulfilled desires and unrealized dreams— 
those of our own
and of those we like and love. 
I also wished that my son might stay young forever,
small and blissful, 
never having to sort through the endless, distinct 
and unexplainable forms of incompletion that each of us carries. 

for these 2 hours,
I could just surrender the impossibility 
of trying to recognize and categorize every worry in the world—
as we grow and gray, we realize:
they are the shape that they are. 

not far from the old home of Hosea Williams
we came upon a tree 
whose trunk was some five- or six-feet in diameter
and I wondered how long it had been there. 
my son, less amused with this introspection,
ran to a nearby grassy slope. 
for the next 20 minutes
we did nothing except run up and down the soft embankment
over and over and over 
and over.

and when we had laughed sufficiently,
almost painfully,
I looked again at the great tree— 
its branches reaching to Heaven, peering over the rooftops 
—and I imagined it
having watched a thousand children play
having stood through a thousand storms. 
I thought of Big Don, smiling on the sidewalk
and my son, 
tapping the earth and listening for its sound. 
neither the young nor the old 
are worried about tomorrow. 
they are not imploring God to adjust His timeline
so that something might pass or bloom before its time. 
it may not be that they are wise or patient, 
but rather, planted. dependent.

there is nowhere to go but to God. 
nowhere we can go beyond His gaze. 
He understands the place where we are, 
the pressures of it all—
and He longs to meet with us
in the million shades of midnight. 

for each regret, there is a perfect grace
uniquely spoken 
a comfort that will carry us to tomorrow. 
we need not be anxious
for He knows our every sorrow. 
He knows

they are the shape that they are.