Historical setting: 561 CE, Gaul
I call through the cottage door, “Eve, don’t be afraid. Please come and walk with me to the hill to your mother’s grave and we will place flowers together. Let’s go now and cut a bouquet from the yellow bobbing heads that fill the wild meadow so late in this season. She always loved those flowers. Come along that we may talk as we go.”
There is no answer and no sound. Maybe she isn’t here. Or perhaps she believes me a ghost so she would expect I could ignore the door between us and surround her with a nimbus spiritual nature. But I’m simply made of earthen flesh — strangely healing — but always just a man of humankind.
I wait long by this door.
“I have waited here. If you are waiting inside not knowing what to do with me waiting out here I understand. I will go away from your door now. I will go on alone and gather the flowers then I will go to your mother’s grave alone. You will see me there if you look. Or you may come even if you choose to hide from me in your bee veils. That will be fine. I so much want to see you again. You are such a beautiful and cheerful child in my memory.”
I gather the flowers and trudge the hill. I try to give her a distance and not to look back to see if she follows but I do take a glance. I catch a flit of bee netting before she ducks to hide. Lithe and lean she is quiet like a wisp. I kneel where the rocks are piled for the graves.
“Papa I can’t let you see me now. I’m not beautiful and I’m not a child; I am always alone so if I would be cheerful that is only for God to know. The Eve you once knew and called wonderful Creation and gift of God is no more.”
She places a large bundle of flowers next to mine then she stands and steps back from me. The bee veils waft in the first winter’s breath around the pillar of a woman’s form.
What can I say to her?
(Come again tomorrow, Wednesday)
Lazarus Ink 