Lessons Learned

I'm reading a book right now and this morning it hit me. The father in the book reminds me of my Dad.

In the book a young girl has gone blind and her father finds a way to show her the world. My father did exactly the same thing.

Sometimes, it was drawing a one yard square in the dirt while we were working and I was too small to constantly have something to do, and telling me to watch it until he returned. Then he would quiz me. What did I see? What did I learn?

Other times it was taking my sister and me on a hike in the woods and then announcing, “I'll see you back at camp.” This started happening when I was very small. My sister and I learned to pay attention. Dad would say things like,“Look at the way that tree is growing, do you think the one with the fork above it caused it to be stunted like that?”

Lessons like: A flowing stream will eventually lead to a river and towns are built on rivers. Water with bugs is safe. I knew a lot about edible plants in the wild and where the dry tinder (on the underside of conifers) could be found in a pinch.

The Colorado Rockies held no fear for me. I camped alone there from the time I could drive. The Utah desert was the same. All the ways to find moisture, how to spot flash flood danger, where to watch for rattlesnakes.

In the novel, the father makes a model of the town for the newly blind girl, prewar France in August 1944. A year later, they step out of his work, a journey they've made with her hand on his belt loop, every work day, and he says, “take us home.”

I marvel at my Dad, telling us, see you back at camp and stepping off the trail. He was gone. We couldn't see him, couldn't hear him. I remember being very afraid. I was 6 years old. But my sister was just over 4 years old and already crying. I said, “Don't worry, we can do it.'

I knew he would not ask of me more than I could do. He trusted me because he knew my capabilities. He believed in me and taught me to believe in me.

Watermelon

I've been thinking about watermelon.  As we purchased a couple of them last night, I remembered a few . . . .

There was one that I won at the 4th of July picnic in the downtown park in Palisade, Colorado when I was in 4th grade.  Bennett Young was running the "prize wheel."  I think it was a dollar a number.  He spun the wheel, it landed on MY number.  I won a big watermelon.  I felt like the luckiest kid on earth.  Not sure how many they gave away that day.  I've had a saying all my life that has morphed a bit but started a few years later.  It goes like this:

"I don't really gamble.  Maybe 5 lottery tickets in my life, a bit of gambling in Vegas when I had to go there for work and met my friends there.  In my family, we're not all that lucky.  We work for what we get.  Pretty much topped out when I won a watermelon at the 4th of July picnic when I was in 4th grade."

Of course, part of that was that it was the first summer we lived there.  I was new in the town my parents grew up in and just learning to enjoy small town life.  My parents knew EVERYONE.  As we walked around everyone wanted to talk to my Dad.  People have always been drawn to him.

Mary Lou Manning (the grandma I chose for myself a few years later) saw my Mom across the street at the Memorial Parade that next year.  She told me that she turned to her husband, Wilbert and said something close to, "she's so beautiful and happy, I'd love to know her."  A few weeks later my Dad stopped by to see Wilbert, his old family friend.  They arranged a dinner with their spouses and BAMB she spotted my Mom and was so excited to know her that the friendship became family.  I spent nights of football games at their house making banana bread with her, learning to make my favorite pickles and taking LONG baths in their great big old claw foot bathtub.  I now realize it was the only bathroom in the house :D.  Not one knock. EVER.

More about them later . . . . they WERE love and family to me.

The other watermelon on my mind was when I was a bit older, maybe 12.  We were camping above 10,000 ft. on Grand Mesa.  Haven't been there in years - still my favorite place on earth. We didn't own a tent yet so we slept in our big station wagon.  Dad, Mom and Lisa slept on a foam pad in the back.  I slept on the seat under those big window skylights.  I watched a meteor shower for HOURS.  Not sure how many I saw but it had to have been thousands.  The next day Dad retrieved a HUGE watermelon from it's spot in the creek.  It had been there to keep cool in the cold, mountain spring water that tasted better than anything I've ever had since.  Watermelon was cold as ice, the day was sunny and warm.  It was perfect.

I hope these taste like that when we eat them with our kids this week.

Wildflowers and Life

I like my flowers the way I like my people . . . REAL.

There’s something about a rose – big and beautiful – but outside of a man’s arms at my door – I don’t love them.  They feel . . .artificial.  Just too much.  Too full, too colorful, too much beautiful scent.

Give me a field of alpine flowers any day.   They are reedy, a little stringy and hardy.  I love that about them.  You find them growing in almost no soil at all.  I am awed a little bit when I happen upon a single bloom in the crack of a giant rock face.  In general, they don’t seem to have the energy to have much smell.

Those high country blooms just seem so happy to be there – that small, determined burst of color.  Among the myriad of shades of green of the forest and meadows – there they are.  That determination – to just be.  Briefly but fully, they are exactly who they are.  It’s made me love them since I was a small girl.

My uncle made me a flower press when I was in grade school.  Up to that point our big family dictionary had limited my ability to press and preserve them.  I loved that flower press.  I could put the flower and leaves in it.  Wait about 4 weeks and have semi-permanent versions of the beauty I found in the mountains. 

My Dad bought a book about alpine flowers of Colorado for me.  It was so much fun to wander around, alone, as a youngster – gathering and learning about them.  Growing up that way was an amazing gift.

My friend says the bush outside my front door needs trimming.  I have trimmed it . . . some.  Somehow though, I will never get over the beauty of the chaos of nature.