Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [102]
The monk’s eyes looked deep into mine. His voice was gentle. “Your penance, and this will not be easy for you, on your walk today, when you see something pleasing—a flower unfurling, a cloud going by, anything—I want you to imagine that you are the only person on this earth and God has created this beauty just for you. Remember, it will be hard for you. Can you do this?” I nodded, wiping my face with the back of my hand. Father Daniel then took golden oil from a small glass cruet and with his fingers marked the sign of the cross on my forehead. “This is the sacrament of the sick,” he said. “You may ask for it at this time.”
I stepped outside the chapel. The heat had abated, and I began to walk west on the path that led to a wooden bench and a view of the Pacific crashing at the cliffs, a thousand feet below. With each step, I watched my life go past, like a film in my mind’s eye—chances missed, risks taken, fears, pleasures, joys, loves. The ghosts. I let them pass, and they knit themselves together as stories, my stories.
How much longer do I have? I wondered. Three months, a year, two years, five? Would the story end now, in the middle? Or would I live as long as my great-grandmother, dying on her ninety-second birthday after breakfast and the paper. I did not know, but something in these hills had allowed my mind to quiet so that I could name my fears. And I felt the possibility that I might be able to navigate the challenges and choices of the months ahead and accept where I was—whatever happened.
When I reached the bench at the edge of the overlook, I stood and watched the sea. The cliffs here were higher, the sweep of sky grander, but I thought of Gay Head.
Then the monk’s words came back to me. This will be hard for you. I smiled. I was a slow learner; things often were. Father Daniel had spoken of God’s love, a greater love. He said that grace and forgiveness are there for us just as we are, in our vulnerability and in our humility, in our fear and in our frailty, when we are at our most human. That we are loved not for what we do or how we appear, but because each one of us is a child of God.
I looked up. A red hawk was soaring, its tail flamed and fanned to catch the wind. No sound. No effort. I closed my eyes. Far below, waves were breaking. I could hear my own breath. I could feel my heart beating.
February 1986
It’s our first weekend away together, a February long weekend. The day we leave, I buy a new coat on impulse—a camel-hair coat, long and belted at the waist. It’s soft and it drapes. I get it on the last day of the Bergdorf 70 percent off sale, and though I’m a four and it’s an eight, I must have it. The back has a deep vent, and it swishes when I walk. And in the store mirror, I don’t see a flushed-faced girl in a too-big coat; I see Katharine Hepburn. I hand over my “for emergencies” credit card. The saleswoman cuts off the tags and packs my old coat in the lavender shopping bag. I slip the new one on and walk out onto Fifty-eighth Street near the Paris Theatre and the drained stone fountain by the Plaza.
On the way up to the Vineyard, we hit a winter storm. I spend most of the flight with my face buried against him, saying prayers I thought I’d forgotten. With every pitch and drop of the small commuter plane, I squeeze his hand. After circling for an hour, we’re stranded on the mainland for the night. Everyone claps when the pilot lands in Hyannis, and we step off woozy into the dark night. John drops coins in the pay phone and wakes someone, the housekeeper at his grandmother’s, to let them know we’ll be spending the night. “We’re set,” he says. It’s easy.
In the taxi on the way over, he admits he was frightened, too, but I never would have guessed it. His face showed nothing.
When we finally get to the Vineyard the next day, it’s foggy. We stock up at Cronig’s Market, then follow the lonely roads, ones I’ve never seen, past shuttered Victorians and shingled farmhouses. By Chilmark, the land turns bare and wild, and when State Road splits, we take the lower fork and turn onto