What happened in the listening time

RETURNING FROM THE FARAWAY LANDS

He'd said it before, in conversation. He hadn't yet brought it here. He'd gone as far as he could go to listen to what he'd found there, in the faraway lands before he could return and listen to what's close. Nothing could have been closer than his mother. He left and went as faraway as he could go. He went to where everything he heard he heard as strange. Strange and wonderful and all of it beyond understanding. Here is where he practiced the listening. Listening to get it right. And he gave himself up to carrying it, and bringing it back, all that he had heard. All that he could carry. It took him, well, it took him most of his life. And he did what he set out to do, he brought it back. He brought back what he heard. And what he heard was her, his mother. He heard her. He sat with her. He had listened to it all. Now it was her turn to return to him. Quiet at first, mirroring his father's quietness. She was hardly noticeable. Her current, like a directional system, guiding him now, through all traffic. Sometimes she would talk to him, throwing out some of her favorite, even family famous, where would we go for naming them? Baseball maybe, line drives--he thinks he'll try it out--Sometimes she would swing and smack the ball where no one was, a rope, but usually the line drives were, like aimed at him, terrifying shots, but now they arrived as volleys, a kind of pitch of delight, and he'd go public with it, I'll give you one more chance before I'm calling the sheriff! one-offs, like that. That close, like his mother was throwing batting practice. They walked like this then. This is how they walked. They walked further through alienation exile than any who knew them individually, would have guessed possible. Both of them quiet, even on busses. In their newness, she asked him again, that question she asked him half a century ago, riding to the baseball game. He was living with priests and nuns at the time, and she asked, Do you still believe like we believe? Asking now, she patted his arm, as she was want to do. I can kid you, too, you know. The others, well, they never listened like you did, not to me. When she said that, he heard his father call, from the other room, Cele, get in here, I need your help. Everybody on the bus turned and looked at them.

Jim Bodeen

29 July 2018