You three have come out in the side yard. He’s batting fungo. You and T. are running hither and yon as if to catch the ball. When you get anywhere near the ball, you put up your gloves to protect yourselves from it, and it thumps on the ground somewhere nearby. But you’re getting the idea of throwing overhand. It’s pretty to watch you, the three of you. I believe I will just step outside and see what he has on his mind. I know there’s something.
He wanted to know if I would be in my study at church tomorrow. I said in the morning, yes. So he will come by to talk with me.
I wish I had more pictures of myself as a younger man, I suppose because I believe that as you read this I will not be old, and when I see you, at the end of your good long life, neither of us will be old. We will be like brothers. That is how I imagine it. Sometimes now when you crawl into my lap and settle against me and I feel that light, quick strength of your body and the weightiness of your head, when you’re cold from playing in the sprinkler or warm from your bath at night, and you lie in my arms and fiddle with my beard and tell me what you’ve been thinking about, that is perfectly pleasant, and I imagine your child self finding me in heaven and jumping into my arms, and there is a great joy in the thought. Still; the other is better, and more likely to be somewhere near the reality of the situation, I believe. We know nothing about heaven, or very little, arid I think Calvin is right to discourage curious speculations on things the Lord has not seen fit to reveal to us. Adulthood is a wonderful thing, and brief. You must be sure to enjoy it while it lasts.
I believe the soul in Paradise must enjoy something nearer to a perpetual vigorous adulthood than to any other state we know. At least that is my hope. Not that Paradise could disappoint, but I believe Boughton is right to enjoy the imagination of heaven as the best pleasure of this world. I don’t see how he can be entirely wrong, approaching it that way. I certainly don’t mind the thought of your mother finding me a strong young man. There is neither male nor female, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but, mutatis mutandis, it would be a fine thing. That mutandis! Such a burden on one word!
Grant me on earth what seems Thee best,
Till death and Heav’n reveal the rest. — Isaac Watts
And John Ames adds his amen.
***
This morning I woke early, which is really a way of saying last night I hardly slept at all. I had it in my mind that I would dress a little more carefully than has been my habit lately. I have a good head of hair, not as evenly distributed as it might be, but pretty thick where it grows and a good white. My eyebrows are white, too, and quite thick. I mean the hairs grow long and spiral off in every direction. The irises of my eyes have begun to melt at the edges a little. They never were any particular color, and now they’re a lighter shade. My nose and ears are definitely larger than they were in my prime. I know I’m a perfectly passable old fellow with regard to my appearance, for what that’s worth. Age is strange, though. Yesterday you stood by my chair and toyed with my eyebrow, pulling the hairs out to their full length and watching them curl back again. You thought it was funny, and it is.
Well, but I shaved carefully and put on a white shirt and buffed my shoes a little, and so on. I think such preparations can be the difference between an elderly gentleman and a codger. I know the former is a more suitable consort for your lovely mother, but sometimes I forget to go to the necessary trouble, and that’s an error I mean to correct.
And after all that, I went up to the church and waited in the sanctuary for the light to come and fell asleep in the pew, upright, which is a good thing, because young Boughton came in looking for me when he found I wasn’t in my study. I felt just the way I imagine the shade of poor old Samuel must have felt when the witch dragged him up from Sheol. “Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?” In fact, I had spent the morning darkness praying for the wisdom to do well by John Ames Boughton, and then when he woke me, I was immediately aware that my sullen old reptilian self would have handed him over to the Philistines for the sake of a few more minutes’ sleep. I really despise the pathos of being found asleep at odd times in odd places. Your mother always tells people I’m just up the whole night reading and writing, and some times that is true. And sometimes I’m just up the whole night wishing I weren’t.
(I do recommend prayer at such times, because often they mean something is in need of resolving. I had arrived at a considerable equanimity, there in the dark, and I believe that is what permitted me to sleep. The problem was that I slept too deeply. The physical body can crave sleep with an animal greed, as everybody knows. Then it is snappish when it is disturbed, as I
