The secret is not in your hand or your eye or your voice, my aunt told me once. The secret is in your heart. Of course, she said, knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.
Is there a lot of stuff you don’t understand? she said & I said pretty much the whole thing & she nodded & said that’s what she thought, but it was nice to hear it anyway & we sat there in the porch swing, listening to the wind & growing up together.
How do you know? she said & the answers fell like feathers, or the first snowflakes of November, light & without words. I looked in her eyes & smiled. You just know, I said.
She said you know what heaven is like? & I said I wasn’t sure & she laughed & said grown-ups didn’t know much at all about important stuff & I said I had to agree with her even though I was one of them myself.