Sunday Service

Story:

The drive from the city to the country always felt like rolling back time.

The summer faded the colour of the tall grass along the narrow road and

inspired a symphony of cicadas and grasshoppers, but the plains of wheat,

the cattle and horses, the sunsets and moons on the horizon were always

the same, month after month, year after year, just as they had been when

he was a boy. Now the leaves were dense and green, hanging heavy over

the road and mottling the light on his dashboard. Soon they’d fade and

fall, and the cycle would continue.

He passed by the rusted tower and remembered climbing its iron legs

with his friends so they could dangle their feet over the ledge, perched

high above the town. Rounding the pond, he remembered roughhousing

with his classmates and tossing each other in to the still, cold water. He

thought back—as he often did—to his first love and their first kiss, sitting

side-by-side on the dock, hands trembling, hearts racing.

By the time he pulled onto the gravel road leading to the church, he experienced

the strange sensation of both slipping into a younger version of

himself and shouldering the weight and wisdom of old age. He still had so

much life ahead of him, yet these journeys back to his hometown imbued

him with the equanimity of a man beyond his years. He remembered

inching along that road in a funeral procession after his mother died, and

later, watching his newlywed sister speeding off, her husband in tow, cans

rattling off the back bumper, clouds of gravel trailing after them.

His sister had already taken her place at the altar when he arrived,

bounc-ing his pretty niece on her hip in the christening gown they had

both worn years ago. As he slipped into the pew, he noted how soft the

wood felt beneath his fingers, polished and worn from so many years of

human touch. But the music was the same. The cool, oaky air of the

church was the same. The smell—ageing paper, freshly mown grass—just

the same. As much as time was hurtling by, it felt in the moment that

nothing had changed.

And yet. As he rose for the first hymn, he touched the ring in his pocket.

Past and present came together in that smooth gold loop. There in the

place that made him, he traced it round and round, over and over again.

Pyramid:

Sizes: 100ml

Type: EDP