Benediction

Peter touches me on the shoulder.

Do you have one minute?

I excuse myself from the table, and follow him into the office.

He left these for you, Peter says in his careful English. He ask me to give them to you.

On the table in front of him are a few small packages. Peter hands them over one by one, with the same care he chooses his words. The last is a necklace.

It was made by hand, Peter says.

He holds it up between us. I have time to think that fastening a necklace around someone's neck is too intimate a thing for us to do, this almost-stranger and I acting out a mutual friend's wishes, but before the thought is fully-formed I am leaning forward slightly and he has placed it over my head as though we had always agreed it would be so.

We nod to each other, and there is something completed in that little office. Something simple and almost pure.

I wear the necklace all day. From time to time I touch it with one hand and I am filled with that feeling again, as though I have been blessed by another human being. It's red and green and blue and a little uneven and it's the most precious thing I own.