Emergence

After 90 degree days, the cool wind surprises me as I step outside my door into the urban semi-darkness. Branches in the street light suggest a hint of gold. Trees seem to tower into the moonlit sky, their silhouettes somehow portentous as the fall-touched wind engulfs heavy summer foliage. Neighbors' windows glow, blue with TVs, yellow with lamps. Two cats watch me from a window sill. I think of the cats I have known, of the essay I would like to write about them, of how I might like to have another some day, of derogatory stereotypes about single women and their cats.

A thought strikes me, buoyant in the moon and wind: I need not worry about the "type" of person I seem to be: the effort to camouflage my home school roots and clueless fashion sense, the fear of seeming a cat-lady spinster, the necessity of propping up a respectable persona, the compulsion to be good enough (or really, better than). The forms of getting up to God are peeling from my soul. My Babel decays. The curtain tears--I stand, in all my unpresentableness, before my Lord, and find His blood sufficient and His gaze tender. There is no type between me and my God.

The buoyancy almost under my feet, the trickle of excitement (instead of too familiar fear) edging my senses, reminds me of a half-forgotten story from childhood. A colt grew wings. They itched as they began to emerge from his shoulders. It was all rather surprising. In my walk, I pause just out of range of the neighbor's sprinkler, watching its rhythm across the lawn, over the sidewalk, and back again. I seize my moment and run, but the ticking declares I will be caught. I hear myself laugh. I have lost months to a darkness, but my shoulders are beginning to itch.