two of your five a day

“Can you get that?” my husband said, a full minute after the doorbell rang. We both knew who it was. A door-to-door fundraiser who’d stopped by last week. That time, he’d got the door and had a long conversation. I only heard the laughter.

“Hello,” he said brightly, and asked for my husband by name.

He bore more than a passing resemblance, both physically and in mannerisms, to the last boyfriend I had before I got married, someone that I didn’t treat all that well. We spoke about Buddhism, fundraising without resorting to poverty pity, the disappointing response he’d had so far in Glasgow. I wondered if his parents had had the saint in mind when naming him, whether they knew about nominative determinism. I lost track of how long we’d been chatting. I asked him how he kept on doing what he was doing.

“Whatever happens, regardless of the outcome, I know that right now, I’m doing the right thing.”

I asked if I could give him a hug. We stood on my doorstep, holding each other. He pressed his arms around me with such giving that I forgot that I was the one who’d offered in the first place. That certainty, of a God, of his connection to that God, of his awareness of the right thing, and knowing what to do. The clarity of it. I was in awe and envy. The beatific expressions of saints in paintings always seemed like eye rolling to me.

“I’m sorry for making you cry,” he said. Instead of telling him the truth, that there’s no making this crying, it’s just there, it only comes further forward sometimes, I asked him if he’d had dinner. He’d not, so I gave him an apple and a banana. He thanked me for my time. I wished him luck - what a facile thing - and that he’d find kindness on his way. Like I had control over any of it. Like saying it out loud could make it happen.

And yet I have no trouble believing in God when I hear you sing.