The Prayer I Had to Take Back

Toward the end of the supper, Tobin tapped his glass with a fork. “I’m told the mother of the bride has a few words.”

I had been told no such thing. But Lavon gave me a small nod, and I stood up on my cane, and the yard went quiet in a wave. I had written a nice toast. I took it from my pocket, looked at it, and put it back.

“I’m told a mother of the bride is supposed to keep it short. I have kept my words short to this man for two years. I believe I owe him the rest.

“A year ago last November, my daughter brought Garrick to my table, and I was very polite. I passed him the potatoes. And after he left, I stood at my kitchen sink and prayed that my daughter would not marry him.”

The laughter stopped. You could have heard a leaf fall.

“I did not pray it once. I prayed it out loud every morning for three hundred and some mornings. ‘Lord, not that boy.’ I said it the very first Saturday he came to my house, while he was stacking my firewood outside.

“I had my reasons, and they were small. A mailbox, fourteen years old. A father who left. A truck with a cracked windshield. Well, the Lord answered my prayer. The answer was no. And He said no by sending that boy up my lane at seven in the morning on the coldest day of the year, with a new board in his truck for a step I had told him not to touch. He put his coat on me. He said the twenty-third Psalm with me three times. He sat eight hours in a waiting room in his shirtsleeves. And while I lay in the county seat, he built me a ramp, and a chair out of the very board that broke me.

“I have tried to tell this man I was sorry for six months, and every time, he has changed the subject. So I am going to say it here, in front of God and the Draw, where he cannot.

“Garrick. I am sorry. I judged you by the worst night of your life and not by the whole of it. I looked at your hands and did not see what they were for. Thank you for the step and the ramp and the stool, and for my life, I think, though I won’t say that too loud, because you would only tell me to hush.

“I pray a different prayer now. It has two halves that come out of my mouth together. Thank You for the answer I did not ask for. Forgive me the one I did. I would like everyone here to say it whenever they have prayed a wrong thing in a loud voice and been given something better. Which I suspect is everyone. To Garrick and Lavon, and to the Lord, who is kinder to me than I have ever been to anyone.”

There was a silence about as long as a breath.

And then Garrick put his head down.

He did not hide it. He put his head down on his arm at the head of the table beside his bride, with his shoulders shaking, and Lavon laid her hand flat in the middle of his back. His mother covered her face. Somewhere behind me a woman said “Amen” under her breath, and then another voice took it up, until the whole yard under the apple trees was saying it softly, in no particular order.