This morning, gingerly footsteps gave notice that Maty was risen. I gazed up from the computer screen to the landing. She appeared, but not as I'd expected to see her. She wasn't in the loose, easy clothes people normally wear when they recover from surgery. She wore a traditional Senegalese dress, a West African beauty. The black headdress she's worn for the last two weeks gave testament to the love she has for her departed father.
She came down the steps slowly, tottering slightly. The pain meds make her dizzy.
Grief-stricken Maty has been almost completely housebound for the last ten days.
But today is Eid, marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Maty dressed to commemorate.
This evening, we drove downtown and I led her out to a bench on the waterfront where we sat and watched the people go by. I tried to get her to laugh by remembering our first date, seven years ago, when we'd come to walk by the river and been caught in the rain and had to run for it. How little we knew of each other back then! How very differently we see each other now!
She smiled, but no laughter. Just as well. Although I miss the sound of it, I wouldn't want her to agitate her wound. My brave young woman.
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