Spring Triptych

It is one of those first spring evenings when you return home at six-thirty, walk through your rooms, and debate about turning on lamps. Something of the late sunlight through which you just drove home from therapy has followed you inside – or rather seems to meet you, already there, in each room you enter. The profoundly human instinct to dress the lamps is momentarily quieted. The world as it is feels like it just might be enough.

The world of memory and intention and repair through which you just walked for fifty minutes while sitting in a familiar office chair is ready to become invisible again. You feed the cat, you measure the cup of rice, you feel the texture of the floor through your socks. Home-making emerges as the task by which you build a healthier world of memory and intention, and you wield each week a surer hand in creating it.

A third paragraph completes this spring triptych. Within the space created by the hinged panels, an altar table is covered by linens, and candles are lit. No choreography predicts the movement of the flames, the movement of the shadows. Tall figures whose conversation flickers across the three panels watch over your life. You have learned to trust them a little more today.



Photo of Downside Abbey Triptych from Andrew Cusack