She Rises

She is ageless – at times a toddler that needs buckled into a high chair and at times a bride walking down the aisle on her wedding day. Sometimes she strokes my hand in my old age and other times she nuzzles into my arms as I carry her on a windy November morning. These are only glimpses in my mind of the person that Penny would be today, or tomorrow. Like a figure in a dream, I cannot make out her features.  But I can always tell that it is her.

She rises in my mind and takes form when I am counting my children at the grocery story. One, two, three, four…where’s the last one? She sometimes finds a place setting at a table to which she cannot be bidden. She gets counted when I am trying to figure out how many seats we need available in the car.

I feel her in the hands of Melody, who tugs at my beard while peering into my eyes. I hear her in the giggles of Lily, joy flashing in her bright eyes. I see her in the shy smile of Luella, straddling the line between the innocent confidence of a much-loved child and the anxiety of a young lady in a world of strangers. I watch her brother take her hand when she has fallen and lead her to me for comfort. And she rises in my mind.

She is more than a memory, because we have no memories of her. She is not formless like a mist or weightless like a ghost. She is substantive. She is full of life. She is precious.

She comes unbidden. No picture conjures her. No siren song calls her. She simply rises in my mind and I am caught away for a moment to a world made better by her presence. I stretch the moment as long my mind can hold such a world in a perfectly preserved prison, but human minds were not made for such things.

Are these echoes in my mind? Echoes from the Mind behind all things? Surely the One who summons Light has a future for the immortal souls of those whose earthly lives began and ended in darkness. Surely the Firstborn of the Dead has a plan, a purpose, and a glory for the little children whom He loves. A purpose that only exists in a weightier land, where every rain drop is a cataract and every sunbeam sufficient to warm a distant planet. A land where her footprints exist in more than my mind. And in that land, she rises.