Lem 2: her nature is her real beauty

"Son," Lem's mother begins

"I know your likes and dislikes, I know your taste in women and your affinity for the nicer things in life. I know because I have raised you, and watched you, and loved you; and a mother comes to know her son." Lem listens with curiosity. He has had many talks with his mother before with her often giving him words of wisdom. Words that usually click right after he has done something stupid. But today there is something else inside her, he almost senses the awaking urgency buried in her customary calm; he notices her need for him to understand what she is saying.

"Lem," she interrupts his thoughts, "it's about your wife"

"Mom, I'm not married, yet" he answers with a slight turn to his lips, lips poised to form a smile and a joke when he realizes that in this moment she may not want to hear his well placed comedy about her Alzheimer's.

"I know son. One day you will, and I need you to know some important things about this woman."

"How do you know who she is?"

"Her name I don't know, but her nature, I can touch her nature with my own hands. And her nature is her real beauty." His mother had always been a poet, so he was used to her colorful words. But when she said 'nature,' he pictured her body (a body he felt that he could look at for a life time) and when she said 'beauty' he pictured her smile (a smile he knew that he could wake to every morning).

In reality, she was speaking of something else all together. Understanding how visual her son is, she whispered a pray in between thoughts

"Father, give me the words."

She reached out and touched her son; placed both her hands around his face, framing it as she had done when he was a boy. She saw her little boy and she saw the man that was forming inside of him and she spoke to that man . . .

(c) Jamillah Warner, www.gospelnerve.com, I got the nerve to say . . .