Holiness Everywhere

We drive toward Hobby Lobby, Jack Johnson crooning mellow in the background, sun sinking low behind the Capitol.

“I saw God in Minnesota,” he says from the backseat. “I saw God at the place where Haukebo’s ashes were.”

[Haukebo, you should know, is what Noah and Rowan called Janice, my mother-in-law. Before we left Minnesota we took the kids to see, generally, the spot where Brad and his dad and brother had scattered her ashes beneath the oak tree, overlooking prairie grass and pond].

I look at Rowan in the rear view mirror. He stares out the window. Bounces one foot to the music.

“Really? You saw God?” I ask, alternately glancing in the mirror at him and keeping my eyes on the orange construction cones ahead. “That sounds pretty cool. How do you know it was him?”

“Everyone sees God sometimes,” Rowan explains, pauses. “Even you see God sometimes.”

“That’s true, I do,” I answer. Wait a bit.

“So tell me,” I ask. “Where exactly did you see him? What did he look like?”

[I like specifics. You know that, right?]

Rowan lifts his arms, spreads his hands wide, gesturing.

“He was just, you know…everywhere,” he tells me, meeting my eyes in the mirror.

I do know, sweetie. I do.