Will VanDenBerg
My mother, an engineer, left us after diverting a river in Poland. In the emptied riverbed, she found a relic lost hundreds of years ago. With no planning, she walked out to the middle of a thick channel of mud and pulled it out. I was called to it, she said. It was a brass arm with a glass window, and inside was the bone of a saint. I don't know which bone; I don't know which saint. When she brought the relic to the local church, the priest showed her its place on their altar from a century ago, a dark patch where the brass base had blocked the light.
She left us soon after. Some threads you have to keep pulling.
We reunited at a Starbucks in Minneapolis after an absence of decades. My life had whittled down to a point, a piercing awl. Her gift of prophecy was spent. The sun was shining, and her palms were clean.