In lieu of happiness, part 1

In lieu of happiness he settles for the wooden rocker on the back porch where he listens to the frogs talk in their pond. His anger, an accumulation of so many seasons of sorrow, is absorbed by the sound of the trees creaking in the wind and for a little while the storm in his mind is held at bay, just barely. She’s finally leaving. He hates it, her leaving, with all his heart, but he knows she’s right to go. His outbursts are too much. She shouldn’t have to bear him any longer. Her bags are packed and loaded in the car along with her dog. He hears the screen door open behind him and feels her familiar presence as she walks lightly across the porch. She stops at his right shoulder and every cell in his body hopes beyond hope that she will touch him, even if just a gentle brush with an outstretched finger, but he knows she knows better. It would be misleading to them both, she has to go. “Goodbye,” she says softly. Then like a whisper whisked away in the breeze she is gone. He didn’t even hear the screen door open and close as she went. And he didn’t turn to look at her one last time. He didn’t open his mouth to speak. He didn’t cry or cry out or run after her down the long gravel driveway. He didn’t plead, saying, “I’ll do better. Everything will change. Give me one more chance.” He just sat stock still in the old rocking chair choking on a lump in his throat whose origin he did not want to speak about or deal with. 

There is good in him. It runs deep like cool water at the bottom of a river, but the heat of his sorrow spills into anger that he can’t control and won’t get help for. He is a man, and some men can’t share what hurts even if the sharing will lead to healing and her staying or coming back. The good in him wells up in a thin, smooth stream and propels him up from where he’s seated. He leaves the rocker and eases down the back stairs into the yard. He moves toward the edge of the woods where he slowly, one by one, checks all the bird feeders to see if they need to be refilled with seed. A little brown bird lands close to him on a low tree limb. He stops and they look at each other. The bird cocks her head and then lights out into the woods. God is and always has been a stranger to him. An odd, old man in the sky who could care less about a little boy being yelled at by all his adults. But as he walks back to the house it crosses his mind that maybe he’ll have another go at the prayer that she taught him, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…” He can’t remember the rest. She wrote it on a little slip of paper. He’d seen it in a drawer somewhere in the house, he couldn’t remember where. Maybe he’d go look for it, or maybe he’d just go to bed early and look for the prayer tomorrow.