Welp. This time the story goes like this:
This time last year I was in Wisconsin. Appleton, to be specific. My assigned missionary buddy was Sister Hogge and we lived in the home of one of the counselors in the Mission Presidency. Sister Hogge was in her last transfer, and I only had 3 more to go. Truth be told, we were both kind of done being missionaries, but were doing our best to hold it together long enough to "finish strong," no easy fete when one little Sister is Headache Central, and the other is gonna crack any minute (the latter would be me). One Sunday afternoon we decided to walk down by the Fox River. Neither of us felt well, but we couldn't bear to go home early again. We told ourselves that we were going to walk down by the river in order to talk to people and hopefully find someone new to teach. In my heart of hearts I was hoping the park would be completely deserted and we'd have to spend the afternoon walking in blissful silence. It was my lucky day. The only two other people in sight were sitting on a park bench near the water, holding hands, sitting close. One hardly invades such private moments as these. We spent a few minutes taking pictures in the failing light, stared at the moving water, and, as the day made its shift from a crisp Fall afternoon to an unpleasantly cold Winter evening, we went our way.
That day, or more rightly, those moments of that day, are some of the most vividly fixed in my mission memory. No doubt they reside solidly where they were made in part due to their connection to a little story Emily Dickenson tells me every Fall.
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons,
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes.
Heavenly Hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the Meanings are.
None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.
When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the Distance
On the look of Death.
Emily told me this story nearly every day during the Falls and Winters I spent in Wisconsin. And I tell you what, that Wisconsin landscape listened, those shadows held their breath! Then, when that pale winter sun slipped below the horizon line it really was like the the distance on the look of death-- the world was suddenly colder and grayer than it had been only seconds before.
Here in Sunny California the slant of light is a little more golden-green, a little more cheerful. It's funny to hear Emily's story in my head (for my heart knows it is November) while watching the gold-green light of late afternoon retreat across the bright green grass.
Well, well.
