I can sleep just yet, I confiscate my Bible from the oak table and start into the living room so I won’t disturb Luke.
“Read here,” he says.
“Oh, I thought you were asleep.”
“Almost,” he says. “But you won’t bother me.”
“I thought this might help,” I say, holding up my Bible.
He doesn’t seem surprised that I need a little help.
“Try Psalm 37,” he suggests.
I sit down, put my feet up on the chaise, adjust my robe, and turn to the Psalms. I have had occasion to practically memorize a few of them, but not this one.
“Psalm 37?” I ask.
He nods.
I turn to it and begin reading. “ ‘Do not fret,’ ” I read aloud.
I look at Luke. He smiles before he closes his eyes, unable to keep them open any longer.
Silently and slowly I read the first eleven verses of Psalm 37 and find wise words that are not altogether unfamiliar: Trust God, delight in him, wait on him .
I return my Bible to its place on the table and turn out the light. I know I could not have received better advice, and I plan to heed it, but I can’t suppress a sigh
as I carefully make my way across the room in the dark and slip into bed beside my husband.
CHAPTER TWO
Kendy
I open my eyes and can hardly discern the dresser six feet from my face.
Not good.
I had wanted to sleep until the sun filtered through the white slats of the plantation shutters to grace the bedroom with warm and reassuring light. I turn the digital clock with its brightly lit numbers toward me, and I groan ever so slightly.
I’m quite sure this day will require more than five hours’ sleep.
Luke is still sleeping peacefully. I nudge him over on his side and snuggle up behind him. I may be awake, but I don’t have to get up. I have never slept until noon, but today I would like to try.
I’m pretty sure Maisey would appreciate it.
Will I ever quit longing for the Maisey who was once mine?
She was thirteen when a vein of irritation and a strange sadness began to run through our relationship. Make that a pulmonary artery of irritation. No book, workshop, or Mom’s Night Out prepared me for it. Can puberty possibly effect such a vast and enduring change? Can a mother’s crisis?
I would have thought our closeness, the envy of all my friends, immovable.
But immovable is a God word.
I’m so glad Marcus calls her Maisey. I wondered if she’d give up her nickname when she went away to college. She might prefer Mother to Mom now, but I have not switched from Maisey to Maize, though I chose the name Maize with love before she was born. When they placed her in my waiting arms and she looked up at me with such interest, the warmth of a summer afternoon filled me, and I knew the name fit. But Maize became Maisey in no time.
“My sweet girl Maisey,” I used to sing as we rocked and rocked, “is more darling than a daisy.” When I took down the teddy bear border from her pink little-girl room, I painted the room yellow (Maize Yellow—think silk tassels in an endless field of ripened corn, delight of my eyes, nourishment for the world) before I stenciled daisies around her wide white window frames.
When Maisey was younger, Luke tended to use her proper name and liked to tousle her hair and declare, “Maize is amazing!” Sometimes he’d just look at her—over the breakfast table, for instance—and shorten it: “A- maz -ing.” Though she must have heard it hundreds of times, she never failed to smile when he said it. Who wouldn’t?
After I finally got in bed last night, I lay here over an hour wishing, wishing I could sleep. But my mind would not settle down to rest; it insisted on thinking.
About the irony for one thing—the wedding irony.
I was quite old enough to plan my own wedding twenty-four years ago, but I couldn’t help being disappointed that Mother didn’t make time to help for the sheer pleasure of it. Maybe, as she said, she didn’t have the time; after all, I had given her only three months’ notice. But I’ve