15 December 2024
Good morning,
This is the Third Sunday of Advent, and the final morning service at St Salvator’s Chapel in 2024. It’s a service of readings and music – there will be five poems drawn from the newly-published second edition of Scottish Religious Poetry, and lovely Christmas music from St Salvator’s Chapel Choir. I will speak on Word made flesh made word. All welcome, 11 am.
Feathers
Part 15
The story so far: Maryam and Joe have decided to share a home, to prepare for the promised birth of Josh.
A few weeks before Lizzie was due, Joe told Maryam the cottage was ready. “It’s not perfect, but it will be warm and dry for the wee one,” he said. And so she left Lizzie and Zach in their anticipation, and returned to Fife, joining Joe in their Nazareth Cottage nest. She could smell its freshness, in buttery yellow paint on the living-room walls and waxed doors and skirting-boards. The small sash-and-case windows looked across the skinny road to other houses, but it was only a short walk by the edge of fields to the sea. They’d stroll there after dinner, the evenings still long and mild, fossicking among oystercatchers and wagtails and sea-swimmers for pieces of pottery and coloured glass on the shore. Gradually, the window sills were covered with their beachfinds, a mosaic of broken plates and bottles salvaged, now making new patterns of line and colour, polished and glowing.
It took a week or two before they realised living together shone a light on their differences. Joe put bags, clothes, shoes, plates and cups down wherever he was and didn’t seem to see them again. Maryam left lights on for hours in rooms no-one was in. Joe liked going to bed when Maryam was ready for an important talk. Maryam left the bathroom scattered with oils, potions and open bottles. Joe picked out the pomegranate seeds from dinner. Maryam hogged the bedcovers. But their affection deepened as they adjusted, learning how to be unlike each other, yet growing closer.
Joe went to work cheerfully every morning, picked up by his father in his van. Once the semester started, they’d sometimes drop Maryam in town if she had a morning class. By now, it could be no secret that she was expecting a baby, and she was something of a minor celebrity among her classmates. She found, in the North Point after class, they treated her as if she was older and wiser than she was, or felt. Friends, who had previously talked only of deadlines and lecturers’ idiosyncrasies, now shared problems with their flatmates or relationships. How would she respond if a flatmate basically moved his girlfriend in rent-free? What would Maryam do if her boyfriend didn’t text her over a weekend? They said how much they envied Maryam her life with Joe, so grown-up, but she could tell they thought her naïve for falling into such a life a decade early. “Won’t it be strange to be looking after a baby when you’re still student-age? Won’t you miss the library? Won’t you miss the bop?” Maryam was fearful that so many chances might pass her by. Robin would help her take a Parental Leave once her exams were done, but could she find her way back to student life as a mother?
Manarola, Cinque Terre
Yours,
Donald.
Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Chaplain