The Better Question

She heard the chirping before she saw the birds, baby robins in the nest she'd watched their industrious mother build, strand by twig by stalk with, Miranda was delighted to notice, a few strands of the blue yarn she'd scattered on the lawn for the birds and their nests...to make a house a home, she explained when Robert, her next door neighbor, asked if she was expecting the night fairies do weave all that mess into something.

She'd resisted correcting his word "mess" into "100% organic wool sheared from highland alpaca known for their calm disposition." 

"It's for the birds," she had said,  but he harrumphed off before she could explain that it was for their nests. The yarn, the alpaca yarn, was a bit of softness and beauty, not a mess.

His last words, shouted before he slammed his door, "Birds don't eat string!"

Poor man. She knew too well the signs of misery and dissatisfaction, been there herself when nothing was beautiful and everything a problem, designed to confuse her, trip her up, make her or something (there weren't any someones then) she cared about miserable.

She thought of knocking on his door, telling him what she'd learned by being quiet, by sitting--alone--and she, like Robert, was alone, but sitting alone at her front window and watching the world emerge before her very eyes brought her joy every day.

"You can do it at any hour," she'd say, "Morning, noon, or night. It's my time to be outside of myself and in the world without moving, to see the beauty we were born to."

She rehearsed the words in her head, silently, twice, imagined his harrumph, his perfected scowl, even his slamming the door. The more she thought about him in the little, perfectly groomed house, not a fallen twig on the sidewalk or a scratch on the smooth grey clapboard siding, the more she knew she had to do it.

She play acted the scene in her head: her timid approach, the too soft knock on the door, him flinging it open and shouting, "What?"or "We don't want any...or...."

But if she had a cherry pie in her hand, or even a plate of cookies, it might please him, might slow him down enough to see what she offered.

"But why bother?" she thought.

"Why not?" she said out loud, always the better question.

~

Two days later the perfectly washed plate appeared on her porch with a one word note: Thanx. 

Best he could do and good enough. Good enough is always enough.