The Kitchen Light Opposite Mine

Aoife's kitchen window looks across a shared yard, about nine feet, at another kitchen window.

She started noticing the light in the second winter she lived there. Two in the morning, sometimes half past, and a small warm square would appear on the wet stones below, and Aoife, who is a poor sleeper herself and was often up making tea, would see the shape of a woman moving about over there.

They have never met properly.

They have passed at the bins. They have both said good morning in the way you say it to a coat and a set of shoulders. Once, at a housing meeting, they were in the same room, and Aoife would not swear to it that the woman noticed her.

But she has kept company with that light for six years.

She has a habit, and she has never told a living soul about it, of praying for the woman when the light comes on. Nothing elaborate. A sentence, sometimes half of one, while the kettle goes. She does not know her name so she says the woman opposite.

And she has grown very fond of her, in the strange way you can be fond of somebody you have invented most of.

In February the light stopped for eleven days.

Aoife noticed on the third night and by the sixth she was properly frightened, and she stood at her own window in the dark working out whether she could knock on a door at two in the morning and what she would even say, and she did not, and on the twelfth night the light came back and Aoife sat down on her own kitchen floor and cried with relief, and then thought, with total clarity, I do not even know if she is called Anne.

Six years of vigil. Eleven days of fear. One person, nine feet away, and not one name between them.

And what she has been sitting with since February is not guilt exactly. It is a very particular kind of loneliness, which is the loneliness of loving somebody entirely at a distance you have chosen and could end at any time.

And you may know that yard. Yours may be a wall, or a shift pattern, or a set of footsteps on the stairs above you, and you may have been keeping company for years with somebody who has no idea you are there.

Nearness is worth more than the miles, and the proverb is blunt about it

Take this off before we go on, because you have carried it across that yard for six years and it was never yours.

You are not required to have an errand before you are allowed to speak to somebody. You never were. Scripture treats a neighbor close by as a good in itself, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a reason, who makes anything grow between two people. Set that down at the window. It is heavy and it has kept a good woman at nine feet.

Now hear the proverb, and hear how unsentimental it is.

Better a neighbour nearby than a relative far away.Proverbs 27:10

That is a startling thing to find in Scripture, because Scripture is enormously interested in family. And yet here it is, plainly stated: for the ordinary business of trouble at two in the morning, the one who is nine feet away is worth more than the one who loves you from three counties over.

Nearness is not a lesser thing. It is named as the better thing, for exactly the kind of night you have both been having separately for six years.

And you are that nearby neighbor. Right now, this minute, whether or not she knows your name. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who has been at work in that kitchen across the yard on every one of those nights, and your six years of half sentences over the kettle have not been going nowhere.

Now let me be careful, because there is a ditch on both sides.

Nobody here is telling you to knock at two in the morning, or to tell her you have been praying for her, or to arrive with anything at all. That is not the ask, and it would be a great deal for a woman to receive from a stranger. Scripture asks you for nearness, and His Spirit does the rest at that hour.

And nobody is telling you the vigil was a substitute or a cowardice. It was not. Praying for somebody at their own darkest hour is real work and heaven has every one of those sentences.

The point is that you are already close and have not let closeness be simple. His word calls that closeness the better thing, and His Spirit has been using it already.

Here is the tender part. You have built a whole relationship in one direction, and one direction is safe, and safety is what has kept you at the window. Scripture is not scolding you for it, and His Spirit has been in every one of those one directional sentences over the kettle.

If you say her name in daylight she becomes a person with opinions and a difficult brother and a way of talking that might tire you. The woman opposite, as she currently exists, is entirely lovely, and she is mostly yours.

You are able for the real one. Now, in the morning, at the bins. Scripture calls the one nearby better than the one far off, and His Spirit is the one who does the joining of two people, and neither of them has ever asked you to have a reason first.

And I will say the honest half, gently. Eleven days in February nearly broke you, and you had no right to knock, and the reason you had no right is that you had never said good morning in daylight. That is not a judgement on you. It is simply the cost, and you have paid it once already.