So, as earlier mentioned, I had lunch yesterday with my brother in law. After talking about the blog, he asked me about my journal. I felt a twinge of guilt as I told him the blog was my journal right now. I thought about this part of our conversation a few times during the day and when I got home I dusted the old thing off and went out back to write.
It had been about three weeks since I made an entry. I jotted down a few things about the day and about my kids and then I wrote down some of the details related to the Small and Simple Things entry on May 2nd.
By now I was a few pages into this thing and took a minute to look up and enjoy my surroundings. I was in the back yard, sitting in a fold up chair. The baby was next to me, playing in his playpen and eating saltines. Beyond him, our little garden sat, barren and ready for the seeds that we just haven't made time to stick in the ground.
We spent a few hours out there on Saturday, getting the mounds all piled up in straight rows, running the drip lines down each trough between the rows, and even planting a few starts that had been growing in the laundry room since late March.
This reminded me of the Saturday, two weeks before, when we spent most of the day out there tilling, raking, and getting rid of all the sticks that had fallen off the trees through the winter. This was the same weekend that so many friends were popping up out of my past on Facebook and asking if we could still be friends. I thought a lot about life that day, especially how life was now, and how I wanted it to be in the future.
I told Nancy that I really liked how far our relationship had come over the past few years. I told her I was very happy with the progress we had made and the closeness we felt toward each other. Then I told her I was ready to take things to the next level.
“Okay,” she said with a touch of intrigue in her voice, “what does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I just see people once in a while that seem to be insanely in love with each other. I think we can be that way. I guess we will just have to figure it out together.” There was a pause as we worked together in the garden, thinking about the words still hanging there. “When you die,” I said, “I want to die a few days later.”
“Okay,” she said again, sort of understanding, sort of laughing.
“You know what I mean?” I added. “Like when one old person dies and then the other is so torn up about it that they only last a week or so.”
“Yes,” she answered. She paused a second, thinking, and then added, “That sounds nice.”
This is a memory I would have lost had I had not opened my journal yesterday. Like a journal, where the rows represent ideas, dreams, and memories, and like a garden, where we plant, and work, and nurture what grows there, relationships are fertile places, ready to be planted with seeds that will sprout and mature into something marvelous and wonderful.
A little more care, a little more forgiveness, a little more trust, love and working closely together toward a common goal. In time, these will give us the beautiful garden we have so long worked to establish, so carefully planted and watered, and so hope to enjoy.
We each went back to work, picking up sticks, raking, working together in our garden – our victory garden, as our 10 year old reader likes to call it.
How about you? Who is most important to you and why?
Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment