my church has a ministry of repairing widow’s homes in the community; today was another work day. I biked down to miss f’s house this morning and we sat on her grandson’s porch as people painted and cleaned and hammered on the roof beside. she instructed, I listened and we laughed a lot and talked about pies and plants and dr. oz from the oprah show, whom we both really like.

across the street were two homes; one, a beautiful, abandoned farmhouse, the other a smaller, well-kept house.

“it’s beautiful grounds.” miss f told me ”let’s walk around the house.”

we walked behind the abandoned house, amid the weeds and the broken screen door the groundhogs made a home in—pushing aside the thick clover to try to find one with four leaves (no luck; I don’t have the gift), inspecting the weathered tree that will one day produce yellow pears; admiring the wiry, white azalea bushes that have grown up wild and uncut.

—before this, though, we passed by the well-kept house. miss f smiled as the neighbor came out; he, maybe twenty with piercings all over; miss f, just at eighty years. the boy came out in pajama pants, rubbing his eyes. “how you doing?” miss f asked. she looked happy, delighted at this act of chatting over white fences on a saturday morning—chatting over fences, as all saturday’s in the world are meant to be spent.

 ”good morning.” he said. “I’m doing really good. I’ve been awake for five minutes.”

I squatted to put my hands through the fence and pet one of the three dogs; black, large, with long hair and a tail that swept the grass.

“that’s josie.” the boy said, and then reached his hand over the fence towards me. “I’m eddie.”

eddie is my nickname. it’s slow to catch-on, but, at zaina’s suggestion, it’s the best one to distinguish me from the two other sarah’s in fellows, nee, the eight-hundred-thirty other sarah’s on campus. jessica says I’m not an eddie, but today, at least, I was.

“I love the wisteria.” I said, which was true. I did loved the wisteria that climbed up the porch railing, winding up the roof. just as I love all wisteria and the way the purple perfume hits me when I ride t-paine to carrborro on the bike path; and how when it does, I am home, walking up the road by the barbee’s cow pasture in the springtime and at the edge of summer.

eddie stepped back to show us the postage-stamp-sized yard of the well-kept house: to begin with, it was a lawn, not just grass, hemmed succinctly by the picket fence. there was an oblong, twined portion of the yard, smaller than a postage-stamp—the size of a paper clip, then?—that held three chubby green plants.

“sunflowers.”

“yes, sunflowers, and we planted tomatoes along the fence” —angular, by the deer antlers on the ground—“tall plants, mostly.”

miss f smiled at him, and took my arm. “we’re going to look at the grounds now.” we walked back along the gravel, I in rolled-up jeans, she in a long floral dress and sweater the color of a united states map. eddie stayed on the lawn, hands still in his pajama pockets, listening to the morning, while josie the dog moved against him.

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I left the student union, just now at three. and for a moment, the math; three in the morning, when I came to the library at three in the afternoon and moved to the union when it closed. three to three; twelve hours and ten pages that aren’t really that good and all run together. I walked home in the rain and bluster and wet pansies and pools of orange lamp-light; with the birds chirping in a way that defied nature. but this is penance for what should have happened weeks ago; and tommorrow will be sleep and more rain, an empty dining hall and mentally preparing for two more days and twelve more pages. not far.