Touched by Love

I woke from an afternoon nap to discover a voicemail message from my childhood best friend’s brother.  This could mean only one thing: Gayle, my childhood “other mother,” had finally passed away.

After returning the call and hearing the expected news, I watched a swollen, white-hot sun fall beneath the horizon, marking the end of the day.  Reflected gold intensified and spread behind the frozen lake, filling the western sky with a vibrant afterglow.

During that spectacular show, it was as if a round window with a mechanical iris windowpane opened wide.  I peered through it into my memory, telescoping back in time to a sunny, warm day in the 50’s.  Gayle was there.  We stood together in her aromatic kitchen filled with both visible and abstract light.  She wore a gingham bib apron trimmed in bright blue rickrack, one of countless items of clothing created at her sewing machine in the wee hours of the morning.  Her signature whole-body laugh and smiling eyes held me captive as love traveled through me, warm and encouraging, all the way to my toes. 

Her laugh wrote affirmations on my child-sized heart, swelling it with confidence that I was accepted and desired.  “Honey,” she said in a way that meant I was valued as a sort of foster child, “Get yourself a glass of milk from the refrigerator – and here, have a couple of warm snickerdoodles.” She called me Honey as if it were my given name, and said it in a way that convinced me I was not only good, but pleasing and even delightful.

Now she is gone, and I will not be warmed by that sparkle in her eye again. However, the love that defined her will not grow cold, but continue to glow like the afterglow of tonight’s sunset in those she loved.