Itinerantdaughter's Blog

“And one day Wulfhild, having dropped off the rents with Marie, stops in the scriptorium to kiss Gytha on the cheek, to slide a packet of candied fennel seed into the mad nun’s pocket. Gytha smiles bluely. Later, when in weariness Wulfhild takes off her leather tunic at her house at night, out falls a tiny painting of a fantastical beast on a cut-up old letter, a green tighter with a human smile or a porcupine playing the lute, which her daughters will one day pin to their collection on the wall. Some nights, going in to kiss her girls in their sleep, she will stop and look and feel before these many bests of Gytha’s something akin to what she felt as a child when the nuns sang their most beautiful, most awesome psalms, a slow internal pouring of ecstasy. Awe. If only she had time to examine this feeling, Wulfhild thinks ruefully; but she does not have time, she never has time, her children call, the business of the abbey calls, the hungers and fatigues of her body call. She will come closer to god when she is old, in a garden among the flowers and the birds, she tells herself; yes, some day she will sit in silence until she knows god, she thinks, lying down in her bed to sleep. Just not now.” ~Lauren Groff, Matrix

This entry was posted on January 20, 2022 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.