It rained a lot yesterday. I met my friend Tallulah for lunch at our usual spot in Vinings. There were few people there, as we were the first ones to come in when they opened. The server kept my coffee cup full and we enjoyed catching up with each other. She is very busy and our lunches together are a real treat for me.

We both had the chicken sandwich with pimento cheese. I had to get fries, though, while she chose a healthy cucumber salad.

She had been to Cumberland Island, where the wild horses run free, as you can see in the photo she took. She and her husband stayed at the Greyfield Inn. She laughed and said that they had trouble keeping up with the young people staying there. Two couples had come over in the boat with them. “They had all kinds of gear,” she told me. “But they were kind enough to insist that we have dinner at their table in the evenings.”

I caught her up on my deck project, which is not gonna be completed anytime soon. “Whoever turns up to work on it is who will work on it,” I told her. I said this because no one wants the job of repairing rotten wood and trying to salvage the deck without building a new one.

They are installing new underground electrical cable in our neighborhood and my yard is due to be dug up in a few days. It will be noisy and the street full of trucks. Throw in firecrackers and you have an idea of how it will be in my neighborhood.

Despite that, the silence holds it all. Yes, I see more deeply these days that silence is my first love and it is calling me back.

One day that is all that will remain of my endless words. The light will have conquered all. It will have poured out its grace upon everything unlike itself. Even music will bow to silence and heaven and earth will be joined.

Vicki Woodyard