Sundays with Ruth

Sundays with Ruth

Steve Bell

It was so many years ago
yet the memories
are quite fresh
like warm biscuits, anointed
with sausage gravy,
each bite a reminder of
those Sundays when you
took me across town to
the care home to visit your son
Charlie, and his housemates.
Once a month
we made this journey
right after church.
I was sixteen
you were perhaps as old as Anna
the prayerful widow who
waited decade after decade
in the Temple
to meet the infant Messiah.
Like her, you were
a woman of prayer
and a widow who at least
twice a week
adopted me.
More than a mother to me
our bond sealed by those
long drives to do Sunday School
for the children,
all the grown-up children
whose minds were forever young.
On every visit
we told the same stories
we prayed the same prayers
we sang the same songs
we got and gave
the same hugs.
And after we said our goodbyes
we went to lunch at
The Hen and Hog;
fried chicken and baked ham
with fixins aplenty, one price
all you can eat.
And today
like all those Sundays
before I grew up,
I can still smell
the aroma of those meals,
and my eyes can still see
your soft, wrinkled hands
passing me the biscuits,
words of grace
gently pouring each Sunday
from your lips.

---

Steve Bell
Poet & Special Education Teacher

Steve recently returned to work as a para-professional in special education in a local public school. I did the same job 45 years ago when I was in college. His lifelong work as an advocate for children and adults with disabilities was sparked by the monthly trips described above with Ruth, a woman who mentored and discipled me at a small church in Manhattan Beach, California.

Photography by Joanna Wix Walkup