Grace, Returning

At church this week I met a beautiful woman named Helen. She showed me her aprons and her gospel songs. She has this way of moving you into the next thing, like breath.

I'd seen her the week before after services, but hadn't made her acquaintance. I caught sight of her as I was passing through the kitchen where she was wiping down the table upon which lunch had been laid out for social hour. She paused as I came in, offering plates and pointing out what had been cooked that week. She looked up at me over her glasses and smiled, gestured that I should help myself. Later she cleared my plate when I had finished and offered me herbal tea from a tray she was passing around. All of this took me to tears. It takes me there now.

Helen is tall, willowy but solid. She seems to have a look, or at least a "church" look: she wears a thick cotton sash wrapping her dreadlocks in an off-kilter, flattering way, the way that a beret sets a face into interesting angles and shadows below. No-nonsense glasses with dark blue frames and half-rectangle lenses, a hair wider than bifocals, frame her dark brown eyes. Though she dresses in strong colors, neon-bright animal and floral print skirts with matching shirts and shawls, she herself doesn't ask for a lot of attention. It feels like she's offering her presence to you as a greeting, the way a flower would, but doesn't need to otherwise take up space. If I had to guess, I'd say Helen is an introvert. One of those introverts who has a quiet secret garden inside her mind that she visits frequently. Her voice is soft and clear.

"I came here, oh, a long time ago, somehow. I came and I left and then I came back," she said to me this week