Pipe, Pen, and Rye Close at Hand

by Rob Goodale

I have once more found occasion to alight on the massive wooden rocking chair which makes its home on the front porch, accompanied by the night sky; pipe, pen, and rye close at hand, watching the cars stroll by and thinking of you.

But for the battered state of my heart and your conspicuous absence, it is perfect.

Normal units of measurement seem inadequate with regard to the passage of time. How much is a score? Twenty? Admittedly, that might be overdoing it just a bit.

Three fortnight and ten days ago, I held the gaze of my best friend for what increasingly appears to be the last time -- or, at least, the last time for a very long while. Her gaze, of course, a pale substitute for her hand, much less her person, but we make do in such times.

It has been a strange few months since that small section of the world I foolishly call my own shifted off of its axis. I watch as dear friends and acquaintances alike visibly struggle to find the proper way to broach the subject; they inevitably ask how I am doing, and I can scarce find anything to say. “I’m okay,” I tell them, trusting that particular arrangement of those two particular words to carry far more weight than their approved load-bearing capacity.

Mostly, life is the same. I still cook. I still write. I still watch baseball. I still see old friends, and I still smile. I do listen to more Fleetwood Mac than I used to, which I suppose is something. I also find myself here on the porch rather often; the silent companions I find here seem to be the only whose invitations I never find difficult to accept.

All the ingredients which have made up my life for the past several years remain intact; yet the taste is not quite right without the stock which bound them all together. I suppose people aren’t meant to be compared to chicken stock. That may have been part of the problem all along.

There is no good way to explain the breaking of a heart, nor is there of hurrying it along in the mending. One can gamely attempt to assemble the pieces and loop them once or twice with string and scotch tape, but the true mending cannot be helped with anything other than deliberate waiting, and there is no telling how much.

And so I am left to my pipe and my pen and my rye, sending out silent pleading prayers into the purpling ether and asking the Living Beauty to help them find their intended target.

May she know that I adore her, and am trying to do that less while loving her more, the adoring, of course, rightfully belonging only to Him. May she know she is loved, and may that love, the love of the cosmos’ creator -- but also of very particular persons with faces and names and words -- penetrate her soul and heal it. And may we both, in our unspeakable brokenness, stop waiting, no matter how badly it may hurt to move.

I do not know what resolution is in store, only that I will in all likelihood detest it, and that it will be incomparably better than this.