ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 117: Good-by to Charles Street

Joshua and I take a break from the last round of work at Charles Street to rest on the back steps and look out at the long yard. Redbirds and robins fly to the birdseed Joshua’s scattered on the concrete feeder under the shade of the massive pin oak.

“This may not be a home Ernie and I would live in, but it’s a future home for you, Joshua, and rental income for now. And being here, working on it, if your daddy was with us, I think he and I would decide to sell our condo and find a home big enough for all of us.”

“I think he would like this place,” Joshua says. “Maybe he’d want to move in. You guys would use the dining room as your bedroom. He’ll write on the sofa in the living room. The back will be your TV room and my room, when I come in.”

He’ll write on the sofa in the living room. Unconsciously Joshua has used the future tense, reflecting what he’s known in the past. What he wants to see again. The back room will be your TV room and my room, when I come in.

“The grocery is just down the street,” he says, “and the grass is easy to cut with a push mower. You like push mowers.”

I nod. I don’t feel sad that our work here is ending, but hearing Joshua say . . . he’ll write on the sofa in the living room . . . yes, this brings tears. Such a lovely thought. Such a lovely vision.

It doesn’t take much to make our lives feel full, does it? The wise among us know what it takes before it’s taken away.