Driving down to Dad's today, I again saw on the bank of a creek this enormous tree that had blown over a couple of years ago. Each time I pass it I expect it to be showing signs of death and decay, but even today it looks green and lush. There's obviously enough of the root structure still in tact and absorbing moisture from the creek. It's actually looking more like a giant bush now. The obvious lessons here are: 1) grow where you're planted, 2) make the best of any difficult situation, and 3) even when we start out as one thing, we may very well become another, equally beautiful, equally useful, entity.
Dad reminds me of this tree. He has lost his grandparents, parents, four siblings, a wife, a granddaughter, and countless aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. Yet despite being blown over by all this, he has learned to adapt and keep growing. The house looks exactly the way it did when Mom was alive, and Dad has learned to cook, clean, and do laundry to keep it that way. He says he regrets more than ever his sixth-grade education b/c it limits his ability to write out checks, but even that has caused him to reach deep in asking for assistance from family and friends. Dad has always been the type who rarely asked for help......probably where I learned it.
BTW.....I brought the flower-shaped solar light that I found several weeks ago. It's really cool in that, after absorbing the sun's rays all day, it turns different colors while glowing at night.....kinda like a perpetual fireworks display. We can't take it out to Mom's grave yet b/c the road to the cemetery isn't easily accessible while a bridge is being repaired. So the light is stuck in Mom's front flower bed amongst her budding Mums, lighting up her garden. Dad thinks its pretty cool so I might have to get another one shaped like a hummingbird for him.
No comments:
Post a Comment