Simple Giving

Logan is home for the weekend. It's been a couple of months. He's home to celebrate my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary.

But the joy is mine.

"I found this," he says. "At the library's used book sale."

We're standing in the kitchen and he's fresh in the door. My eyes wander over him. He's thinner. His hair has grown. But he's solid. He looks good and he's strong.

He pushes the book into my hands and I'm surprised, again, that the hands that once folded into mine now belong to a man. I feel the weight of the old book. The cover is ruddy and loved and worn. It's John Steinbeck's short novels. One of my favorites. And he knows. We read together over the summer when the days weren't numbered and time wasn't short.

"There's this, too," he says. And he opens his hand.

There's a rose on his outstretched palm. It's red and gold and a gentle shade of brown. It's been created. Twisted. Rolled and turned and made lovely from autumn leaves.

My son smiles at me.

"It's beautiful," I say. And I try not to cry because things like this, these simple things, were almost lost last spring.

I take the rose and look at the boy and I could break from this easy love.

He gives me a hug. I know that these moments must last for months. And I know, too, that his friends are on the way and he'll be out the door again soon but this moment, this here and now, is mine.

"I love you," I say.

"I love you, too."

My son's come home to celebrate a precious family event.

But with simple gifts and kind, sweet love he's celebrated my heart, too.