It’s raining this morning. I stood in it for a few moments feeling the sun rise. It’s not a spring rain by any stretch. It’s still chilly outside.
But it was soft, and welcoming, a pleasant friend after the bone-chilling days
and nights we have had. It made me remember a girl I once knew whose hair would
make an almost audible sound while springing into curls from a sudden shower,
and I smiled.
Then it made me remember sitting next to a young wife with
long straight hair, on the porch of our first home, drinking wine, and watching puddles
form in the street, and I counted the years.
It’s important to notice and appreciate moments and places,
no matter when or where. Life has a tendency to change those for us, laughing with glee at our puny plans. We adapt to the new plans, or they will watch us
wither.
Once, I thought I had it made. I had worked my way though
college and was living in one of America’s most exciting cities at one of its
most exciting times. I had lots of friends, good and true ones, I thought. I
earned enough to do as I pleased. Blessings, not rain, poured on me.
A year later I was sitting on a bunker in the middle of the
night, feeling the monsoon slowly soaking every square inch of my body. Those
friends? They couldn’t force themselves to abide one who participated in an
evil and unjust war. I couldn’t really blame them, but I had made my choices and
they had made theirs. They still sat in warm circles playing music and …
whatever. I sat cold, wet, and friendless, alone on the other side of the world
from anyone who still did love me. So much for planning our lives.
It all turned out fine. But I stood outside at daybreak today, while the rain talked to me about it all. I had read a piece in Sunday’s paper about the best
and most exciting places in the world to visit this year. We won’t be seeing any
of them. Once again, we have made our choices. There are more fulfilling things
than having, or even pretending to have, fun, in life. Life can narrow your field
of vision, and one fares better after accepting it.
There will be soft rains, though. There will be days when a
person in your care suddenly remembers something you thought had died in their
memory long ago. There will be, if we’re lucky, the first sight of a young corn
plant peaking from the soaked earth. There will be the warming sight of a small herd of
deer drifting into our pasture at sundown because they know it is a safe place.
There will be the feel of a soft hand clutching yours in the night, the first
sound of the geese in late winter, the smell of freshly plowed earth in the
spring, and the first taste of food grown by your own hands. And there will be songs to learn and books to read. None of these
things require a tour of Tuscany. We will tend those in our care and be observant to life. Isn't that enough?
I hear people say, “I’ll be happy once I move to (wherever)." I worry that many will only face disappointment. Then I hear my late father-in-law,
on the bitterest day of the year, saying “It’ll be spring before you know it,”
and I think to myself, “He was almost always happy, I think.”
In addition to our lives, I worry that all Americans face
some dreadfully unforeseen changes soon. I may be wrong, but signs alarm me. We
have a powerful coalition that seems bent on changing the most basic character
of our lands, our country, and our society. Why? I don’t know. I’m not even
sure those in the coalition know, or would agree upon the motivation.
It goes beyond political differences. It appears, in all respects, to be a coalition based on hate, greed, the illogical, and a strong dose of nihilism, much
of that resulting from a religion that abhors the concept of a “social gospel,”
and favors either a gospel of greed or an apocalypse
based on mythological prophecy.
That will bring change to us all. Those who end up with
everything will be faced with having to see if “all is enough.” Those who end
up with nothing will, for the first time in their lives, be forced to understand
that decisions bear consequences. Those who find themselves on the wrong side of history will simply lie.
I will be hysterically happy if I’m wrong. But, as for me
and my family, we’ll just live once more to see our earth, “… breeding lilacs out
of a dead land.”
Or maybe just corn.
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