Tuesday, April 18, 2006
father, son, daughter
I woke up early this morning, around 4:30, and got up. I worked about the house, made breakfast for myself, read a little more of Numbers. I've been reading the bible from the beginning, a little at a time, this in part because of a new audio-guide the Museum where I work is about to release for public use. The guide is a series of brief commentaries by various members of Emory's faculty from the departments of religion, theology, and middle eastern studies. Their comments draw links between biblical passages and biblical history and objects we have in the permanent collection. I've found it fascinating and had been led further, reading for myself, thinking, seeing connections between ancient Egypt and the beginnings of other religions. While it was still dark this morning, I decided to take water to the yarrow and the lamb's ear my father and I planted on Saturday in my garden. I filled the plastic pitcher with water from the kitchen faucet and walked out into the early morning night. The moon was bright, a few days past full, and the air was not quite warm, a breeze moved here and there and I walked barefoot, felt the coolness of the dew in the grass and found first one yarrow and then another, and the lamb's ear, carried several pitchers of water to them all. As I tended to them, I thought of Saturday and planting them with my father.
Last fall, when a second crisis forced many issues with my parents, I had pretty well had to abandon my garden. There just wasn't time to tend to it. My father had had to give his garden up when he and my mother sold their house. So both of us had lost something that mattered to us. Winter came. I told my father that when the weather got warmer, if he felt like it I'd be very glad to have him come to my house and help me work in my garden, that I could use the help. Saturday everything aligned perfectly--weather, time, and my father was ready and willing. I picked him, since he no longer drives, and brought him home with me. He asked about tools, so I showed him the two shovels I have. He selected the rounded one with the long handle and noted that the shovel's blade was bent. He said it needed sharpening. I hadn't ever realized that shovels require sharpening. I fetched a file and he sharpened the blade. He asked where I'd like first one and then another of the plants. And he prepared the soil, loosened it, considered depth and width. While he worked, I pulled weeds, rapidly, with a new tool I'd gotten.
My father has lost a lot of weight over the last couple of years. He's lost muscle mass, too. He's not as tall as he once was and he can't hear well. He's also losing memory and knows it. But on Saturday he taught me things I hadn't known and to me, he felt whole and it felt good to work alongside him. We sat together so he could rest a couple of times. He doesn't have the stamina he once did. I told him I'd learned things from him that I hadn't known before. He said he hadn't known them either, until his father taught him. That meant a lot to me. It was like having his father there with the two of us. His father died, was murdered, when my father was 19 so I never had the chance to know his father. Learning from my father some of the things he'd learned from his, it felt like he was there with us, too.
On Sunday morning, I went to church. I wasn't at all sure I wanted to be there but I'd needed to take my daughter, Roxanne, because she had agreed to help with the Easter Egg hunt and I stayed for the service. I'd hoped for a flower communion service. I've grown accustomed to that service over the last 20 years or so, and love it for the beauty that each person brings in the form of flowers, love the symbol of beginnings a flower represents, love that each person takes away a flower brought by someone unknown other. But the new interim minister didn't include a flower communion this year. Instead he talked about the story of Jesus' resurrection, from the book of John. He spoke of the part where Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and discovers that Jesus' body is gone. And then Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene only she doesn't recognize him, mistakes him for the gardener. The whole sermon was about this idea of Jesus as a gardener, and of the paradise that is here and now.
I often feel as if my life has little variation, little that is likely to be of interest to others, taken up as it is with the concerns of aging parents and raising my children, working. Yesterday I'd had to run errands after work. Drop off film to be developed for Roxanne so she'd have negatives to print from at her photography class later this week. Pick up baby wipes for my mother, write a check to pay the caregiver, visit with my parents. I was hungry and it had not been a good day at work. I bought what is, for me, comfort food--a sandwich from Chik-fil-A, and drove to the parking lot at Target to sit in the quiet of my car and eat, enjoy the brief respite before completing my errands. And as I sat there among the parked cars, the expanse of asphalt, looking at the beautiful blue sky, I noticed a hawk, seemingly suspended in the air, facing my direction, somehow magically stationary. I watched with wonder for maybe ten minutes as that hawk held itself in the sky, facing into the wind, the sun.
Last fall, when a second crisis forced many issues with my parents, I had pretty well had to abandon my garden. There just wasn't time to tend to it. My father had had to give his garden up when he and my mother sold their house. So both of us had lost something that mattered to us. Winter came. I told my father that when the weather got warmer, if he felt like it I'd be very glad to have him come to my house and help me work in my garden, that I could use the help. Saturday everything aligned perfectly--weather, time, and my father was ready and willing. I picked him, since he no longer drives, and brought him home with me. He asked about tools, so I showed him the two shovels I have. He selected the rounded one with the long handle and noted that the shovel's blade was bent. He said it needed sharpening. I hadn't ever realized that shovels require sharpening. I fetched a file and he sharpened the blade. He asked where I'd like first one and then another of the plants. And he prepared the soil, loosened it, considered depth and width. While he worked, I pulled weeds, rapidly, with a new tool I'd gotten.
My father has lost a lot of weight over the last couple of years. He's lost muscle mass, too. He's not as tall as he once was and he can't hear well. He's also losing memory and knows it. But on Saturday he taught me things I hadn't known and to me, he felt whole and it felt good to work alongside him. We sat together so he could rest a couple of times. He doesn't have the stamina he once did. I told him I'd learned things from him that I hadn't known before. He said he hadn't known them either, until his father taught him. That meant a lot to me. It was like having his father there with the two of us. His father died, was murdered, when my father was 19 so I never had the chance to know his father. Learning from my father some of the things he'd learned from his, it felt like he was there with us, too.
On Sunday morning, I went to church. I wasn't at all sure I wanted to be there but I'd needed to take my daughter, Roxanne, because she had agreed to help with the Easter Egg hunt and I stayed for the service. I'd hoped for a flower communion service. I've grown accustomed to that service over the last 20 years or so, and love it for the beauty that each person brings in the form of flowers, love the symbol of beginnings a flower represents, love that each person takes away a flower brought by someone unknown other. But the new interim minister didn't include a flower communion this year. Instead he talked about the story of Jesus' resurrection, from the book of John. He spoke of the part where Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and discovers that Jesus' body is gone. And then Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene only she doesn't recognize him, mistakes him for the gardener. The whole sermon was about this idea of Jesus as a gardener, and of the paradise that is here and now.
I often feel as if my life has little variation, little that is likely to be of interest to others, taken up as it is with the concerns of aging parents and raising my children, working. Yesterday I'd had to run errands after work. Drop off film to be developed for Roxanne so she'd have negatives to print from at her photography class later this week. Pick up baby wipes for my mother, write a check to pay the caregiver, visit with my parents. I was hungry and it had not been a good day at work. I bought what is, for me, comfort food--a sandwich from Chik-fil-A, and drove to the parking lot at Target to sit in the quiet of my car and eat, enjoy the brief respite before completing my errands. And as I sat there among the parked cars, the expanse of asphalt, looking at the beautiful blue sky, I noticed a hawk, seemingly suspended in the air, facing my direction, somehow magically stationary. I watched with wonder for maybe ten minutes as that hawk held itself in the sky, facing into the wind, the sun.
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