As we sit with my mother we can sew, knit, read, talk to her or amongst ourselves, but if we should start to nod, our eyes closing against our will, she becomes as petulant as a three-year old. Our four hour stints become a scramble. It is so long and lonesome that the three of us spend most of our time together, at her bedside, drawn to it like moths. We leave only for cat naps and even then often sleep on the grass just outside the sliding screen door to her room. God a cause.
General causes are either supernatural or natural.
Supernatural are from God and his angels, or, by God's permission from the devil and his ministers. He sends down plagues and famines, flails us for our transgressions, strikes us down with leprosy, madness, great diseases of the bowels, blindness and an astonishment of the heart. On the whole, Burton says, He can leave you feeling like smoke corked in a bottle. Our neighbor Beatriz has taken pity on our steady diet of beans and has made us a roast pork. I, for one, am eager to dine on my betters.