A letter from Papaw — Before light. Picture of the grandbaby propped against the sugar bowl.

One of the grandkids sent me a picture two nights ago. Little girl at the kitchen table at her mama's house, coloring something, tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth the way her mama used to. Sent it just to send it. No occasion.

I sat with it a while. Then I did what I do — went in with my thumb and pinched at it till it got bigger, and pinched again, and made it big enough that it went to squares and I couldn't see her face anymore. Wasn't looking at her face. Was looking at what was behind her.

There's a dish towel folded on the counter behind that baby. Blue-and-white check. Folded in threes. Ruth's fold. Our daughter learned it standing at Ruth's elbow when she was smaller than that baby is now, and she does it the same way in her own kitchen four hundred miles from here, and she don't know she's doing it. She just folds a towel.

I zoomed back out and looked at the baby's face and then back in at the towel and back out at the face. Did that a while.

I have got a bathroom mirror I try not to spend time in front of. My face is my daddy's now. The good hair Ruth used to run her hand through some Sunday mornings is mostly gone and what's left is white. Went to town Thursday, the Asheville run for a fuel filter, and caught myself in the glass at the parts counter and didn't recognize the man for a full second. Drove home slow. Tires on the gravel coming up the drive sounded the way they always have.

I'll tell you what I keep coming back to. My face is going and I don't much mind. Ruth's face is gone and I mind that plenty. But the way she folded a towel is on a counter in a house I've never been in, and a baby who never met her is going to fold hers the same way one day and won't know why. That towel is the part of Ruth that outlasted her face and mine and it don't care what either of us look like.

Going to prop that picture up on the shelf next to Mama's Bible before I lose my nerve.

Love,