It was evening when Auntie Jessie and Two Hours Max came into the garden, carrying their blankets and just one small bag of things. They didn’t have much. They walked very quietly down the path. Hineni looked up, and saw them standing there. “Hello!” he shouted. He scrambled to his feet and ran to meet them.
He showed them their space on the shelf, and they left their little mound of things there, and came down to join the others sitting round the fire.
You can’t always imagine how it will be with a person who comes to stay. People carry a certain amount of baggage on the inside as well as on the outside. People shine with different light from each other. It’s not easy to tell until they arrive.
But Yūgen, sitting next to the Great Bear (who was all better now), looked at Two Hours Max, who had found a space to sit quietly by themself, and at Auntie Jessie who had somehow become surrounded by little girls, and she thought that — yes — this was going to work.
It wouldn’t be possible to say how this had happened exactly. Auntie Jessie was shy and quiet, though she had a kind of merriment in her smile. They were late with supper that evening — there had been a confusion about whose turn it was to cook. But when at last everything was ready and Kanso said it was time to eat, Auntie Jessie said to the little girls, “We can pretend we’re in a café, can’t we? Out on the town, the happiest people on earth.”
And sometimes, what you pretend becomes sort of true. That’s how reality comes into the world. It starts with an idea.
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