Gilead - Marilynne Robinson [53]
The story of Hagar and Ishmael came to mind while I was praying this morning, and I found a great assurance in it. The story says that it is not only the father of a child who cares for its life, who protects its mother, and it says that even if the 1 mother can't find a way to provide for it, or herself, provision will be made. At that level it is a story full of comfort. That is how life goes—we send our children into the wilderness. Some of them on the day they are born, it seems, for all the help we can give them. Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves. But there must be angels there, too, and springs of water. Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord's. I need to bear this in mind.
Young Boughton came by to see if you felt like a game of catch. You did. He was sunburned from working in the garden.
It gave him a healthy, honest look. He's teaching you to throw overhand. He said he couldn't stay for supper. You were disappointed, as I believe your mother was also.
The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light. It seems like a metaphor for something. So much does. Ralph Waldo Emerson is excellent on this point.
It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. Or marriage within friendship and love. I'll try to remember to use this. I believe I see a place for it in my thoughts on Hagar and Ishmael. Their time in the wilderness seems like a specific moment of divine Providence within the whole providential regime of Creation.
Just before suppertime yesterday evening Jack Boughton came strolling by. He sat himself down on the porch step and talked baseball and politics—he favors the Yankees, which he has 1 every right to do—until the fragrance of macaroni and cheese so obtruded itself that I was obliged to invite him in. You and your mother still regard him as a fairly wonderful surprise, this John Ames Boughton with his quiet voice and his preacherly manner, which, by the way, he has done nothing to earn, or to deserve. To the best of my knowledge, at any rate. He had it even as a child, and I always found that disturbing. Maybe it's something he isn't conscious of, growing up the way he did. But it seems to me sometimes that there's an element of parody in it. I wonder if he acts that way everywhere, or if he does it only around me, and around his father. What do I mean by preacherly? There's a way of being formal and deferential and at the same time cordial, while maintaining an air of dignified authority, which is preacherly. I never mastered this myself, but my father had it and Boughton had it. My grandfather, that old Nazirite, was impressive in another style. But of sheer and perfect preacherliness I have never seen a finer example than this Jack Boughton, heathen that he is, or was. Your mother asked him if he would like to say grace, and he did, with an elegant simplicity that seemed almost wasted on macaroni and cheese.
He mentioned that I had not been to see his father in a few days, -which is the truth, and which is no coincidence either. I thought he might be at his father's only a few days. It has been one of the great irritations of my life, seeing the two of them together. I hoped to stay away till he left, but clearly he is not about to do that.
In the old days I used to come into the kitchen and look around in the pantry and the icebox, and generally I'd find a pot full of soup or stew or a casserole of some kind, which I would warm up or not depending on my mood. If I didn't find anything, I'd eat cold baked