Memories of God

In my earliest memory of God, I am enveloped in yellow.

Color and shape begin to surface. Blurry, bright, and slow rising from some deep recess. Feet are firmly planted below, while palms face upward: I see but dimly, straining for some sight beyond. I am standing in a garden, with outstretched hands holding wonder and scents of summer. All of but five, maybe six years young. Still supported by soil. A shade and comfort-casting wall, easily twice as I am tall and surely no less, towers over me, while she weeds in ambient sunflower glow. Stooped low, she works this given ground with calluses and patience: her hands pausing from hallowing dirt just long enough to press cherry tomatoes into open palms. Tenderness, plump and picked fresh from the vine, wraps its way over arms, swirls in and around these anchored legs, as ever so slowly it creeps into an always longing heart. Carefully, with the kind of reverence reserved only for the greatest of world wonders, I pluck stems from these newfound treasures. Tastebuds savor the sweet earth of a garden's graces. And soon a chorus of commonplace transcendence follows: playful and light, childlike curiosity set to a symphony of sugar-snap peas. Sacred inquiries like those pea pods snack-crackle-pop through the summertime stillness. Mother, do worms eat dirt, and are these tunnels their homes? Where does God live, the sky? Is it true they have multiple lives, O Mother, the worms I mean, of course? And will they forget this life in their next? Where will God go if ever the sky above us dies? Would it fall down like ashes? Tell me, Mother: will we too one day return to dust ditches like these, our squirmy bodies becoming sod once again, trampled under toes though surely, surely, surely nonetheless beloved in Eternal eyes? I stand here. All-the-while, with earth folded under fingernails, swimming in this sea of yellow shadows. Barefoot amid the sacred. Unbroken.

For awhile, I forgot all about that rich soil. It would be several years still before I remembered this too was something I knew, and returned again. And truthfully I have forgotten the story many times since—and surely will again too soon. More times than I care to admit. Sometimes the plot simply gets lost, others it is willfully abandoned. Prone to wander, as they say, even still. Yet all the while, in that celestial city of forever yellow where once-known things remain: God surely still dwells within the brilliant cover of every sunflower shadow.