Featured Guest Writer Christine Bates from her piece in Bewilderness Writing based on the poem “Offering” by Albert Garcia.

Small, bright, honest - my granddaughter holds my hand while each of us eats supper with a remaining free hand - my chicken salad and her cheese pizza, both from Newks. I rushed home from the hospital in Nashville so I could be in time for supper - meaning I arrived very thirsty, because I reduced restroom stops as much as possible. She chattered about the birthday party she went to, rolling my fingers back and forth between her little ones.

"She didn't miss you at all," my daughter teased, and the baby stopped talking, sat up straighter, preparing to argue and then caught on that it was some kind of joke, and laughed with all the grownups as if she understood.

Because, in a way, she did. She understood Mommy was teasing. And she understood more than we thought about the hospital. When my daughter asked about the visit, the little one piped in, still holding my hand, "Did she die, Bubbie?" And I got to tell her good news, that Annette did not die today. 

I did not say Annette thrashed a little and tried to open her eyes and moved her head when I talked to her. That it distressed me to think I might be bothering her, or how the nurse said, "She's okay. She's just letting you know she hears you. She knows your voice. She does that with her husband, too." I just said, "I played Annette some music she likes and talked to her."

When the baby's belly was full, she took her plate without being asked to, and came back to me for a good long hug - the kind she rarely stands still long enough to deliver. And her mother's boyfriend told me all about how smart this little girl is, asking about a family member of his, "She just met him once at Thanksgiving!" And for that moment all was good and safe, bright and honest, and fleeting."