Arvilla Fee
Church Door Shadow
I hold my daughter’s little hand in mine even though the bleached Italian sun generates heatwaves from the afternoon sidewalk, making us sticky with sweat. I know we look like tourists, the way we gawk up at St. Paul’s Cathedral, but we gawk anyway. Then I feel a tug on my hand, and my daughter points towards a door on the side of the building. Lowering my gaze, I see what she sees . . . a woman sitting on the pavement, her dark blue skirt covering her legs. A gauzy black veil drapes down on either side of her time-worn face like a theater’s curtains left half open. “Mommy, can I?” asks my daughter, holding up the bag of juicy purple grapes we’d purchased earlier from a street market. I nod and let her take the few remaining steps between us and the woman by herself. As I watch her squat down beside the woman and hold out her offering, my throat aches with a tenderness I cannot put into words.
naked stem . . . an eternal gift of grace
About the Author
Arvilla Fee is married to an Air Force Colonel and has four children. Military life has enriched her teaching and writing careers as she’s lived in five different states and visited several countries. With each new piece, she hopes her readers will wipe away tears, burst out in laughter, think critically about the world in which we live . . .or just say “She gets me!”