Dad's roses

     I lay there in the dark, 4:23 a.m., and I was thinking about how thankful I am for a precious gift. I can remember!! Watching that movie in my mind, I see all the neighborhood kids waiting to see if that black kite my Dad made, that was almost as big as a Volkswagen, could fly over that scraggly windy field. It did. The sound of the wind gurgling the edges of the thick plastic I can hear if I want to.  I see color folding itself over in browns, greens, pinks faded, vibrant, on a canvas. I see the brush strokes. The aroma of  Dad’s roses, and the cologne permeating the viewing room of my fourth grade classmate who died playing cowboys and Indians. He joked with me before the bell rang, and then a few hours later he was gone. Suddenly  moving forward, I am with  a couple hundred un-wise college kids singing, the Hallelujah Chorus, ”the government shall be upon  His shoulder,” while the expectation of Christmas lightened our silly hearts…wonderful hearts.  I can cradle yesterday like a baby, kiss its forehead, it may wake up and smile or cry whatever the memory may bring. But I have a choice!

     Tomorrow is elusive; it is really never here.  We plan on it, but we can’t count on it. I have today at this moment to live some joy, tiny as a molecule or not, and I can find it. I have a choice!

     But the person that I love, and take care of does not have the choice of remembering everything about yesterday, or the ability to even began a search for joy today. The questions of why, how, when, or where can’t always be properly answered, and someday, maybe, such a thing as a question will be blank. Someday, faith and the way it moves the soul will be blank. Hope ….blank. Love….blank. Love is given. For now, that gift and others are accepted although not remembered for long.  Laughing in the moment is all there is, because it will not be remembered in ten minutes. Why wrap  a present for Christmas? Why make a joke? Why give at all if it isn’t remembered?  Because for that tiny moment there is a gram of happiness. Love is a binder though, and it crochets together the blank spaces and the threads that are leftover. 

     So, I am thankful to have a memory. With that I can learn from my mistakes, plan, dream, hope, gain, lose with grace, fall, know to get up, paint, write, and play music. I can cradle yesterday, put it back in its crib, and leave singing it to sleep. I can live in today. I remember, and I choose a focus of good.     ….Terri O.A. 

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