my parents' dance

she wore skirts and patent leather shoes and sat shy in front, in calculus class. and she blushed pink and tilted head sideways and he needed to know her, this woman named Yvonne and so he did. he knew her slowly, biking miles on country road to bring her flowers and God in a soil-thumbed Bible and kissing sweet under shooting-star-sky.

today he bows low to massage her feet with lotion, kisses her quiet as she hums off-key and touches hand beneath afghan as they watch British comedy.

she's had it for seven years, this tumor. mum who schooled us at kitchen table, who broke back baking bread, hanging laundry-line and being wife of pastor. mum whose hands are still worn and smell of Jergen's. but who sometimes forgets what day it is, or how to walk.

but the tumor is shrinking and she is rising, up, out of bed and into a new dawn of day and she is learning, how to walk, how to bake, how to clean, and she is hanging laundry on line and singing in key and blushing pink when Dad kisses her.

i watch them dance to the lull of love's song and i think, now is the time. and i turn in the shadows--them distracted by a shooting star--and i slip out the back door into my husband's world while my parents continue to lean and laugh and learn from the other.

he makes everything beautiful in his time...

mum, he's made you breath-taking.


(please note, this decision to move has not been easy. trent's father has been injured for the past seven years, so trent's heart has been torn, wanting to help him on the farm... please pray for my sweet parents. i ache.

this is the last post i'll be writing for awhile; i'll be on the road until we settle down in alberta... driving with babe and husband and life-belongings shoved precariously into trailer-back... veggie oil fumes behind us... will write as camping and wireless allow)