The Music of My Life

by Sandra Miller-Long

I spent the day visiting with a friend. It was her husband's birthday. He would have been 75. We sat at her tiny kitchen table, now for one person, ate her excellent food and drank her sour tea. For dessert we had tiny chocolate cakes she'd made earlier that day with good vanilla ice cream. Her husband would have loved them.

In the early evening we went for a walk. There's something about the night that draws me constantly to it. It's silent beauty, its mystery captivates me entirely. The stars twinkle so beautifully. Makes me wish sometimes I was one.

As we continued to walk, a gentle drizzle came down on us. We quickly moved to the nearby shelter of a bus-stop, and looked to the sky. A dazzling scene was set. The sleepy rhythm of the falling rain, with the silvery moonlight shining through, all set against the dark night. It looked as if it was raining stars from heaven. Breathtaking.

I sat in affection, listening to this lovely lonely woman telling me things she has told me so many times before; I held her in my arms, and we listened to the rain, and we cried a little.

The two of us sang happy birthday to her husband ... and then my mother and I walked home.