Christmas Bits and Thoughts and Midrashim -- #3


In Morning Light


    Just before dawn, in the last whispers of night, she stood.

     She had been there a while, having risen in the dark hoping to see the first light of the sun begin the day. Her thoughts had been of bread to knead, and floors to sweep -- and Joseph.
    Closing her eyes she thought about the night months ago, swaying into the memory...
Joseph came and talked with her father, talked a long, long time. Joseph rubbed his rough, strong hands together nervously; his eyes somber then. She had never seen them like that: dark, intense. In fact, it was his eyes she knew best: his eyes that laughed, that sparkled in merriment, his eyes that strayed to children at play as he worked. She could not hear the words they spoke, just the voices of her father and Joseph. And then her father nodded and Joseph had turned ~ and she had caught her breath as Joseph caught her eyes. 

      The agreement was made, they were espoused. She still trembled at the thought. Soon.

     Now he took every free moment to build their home so he could take her home to be  ~ his wife. Even in her thoughts, she whispered the word . . . wife!

     Gazing out the window in the crisp morning, she hugged her shawl tightly around her shoulders, delighting and shivering at the feel of her feet on the night-chilled floor. Standing there looking out into the last wisps of darkness, suddenly behind her, the room had bloomed in brilliant light.
Startled, she turned . . .

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