about preparing for a move is the realization that David's "little" fir tree (now towering above the house), the Mimosa we planted last year, the bulbs Lauren gave me, the dogwood tree the kids gave Cindi, the lilac that Jean and Mark planted for us in the backyard, and the beautiful ginkgo tree that Paul gave in honor of my 25th anniversary of ordination - well, they stay here and we move on. Someone else will be enjoying them.
And that's actually a picture of life. We may plant and arrange and enjoy but finally we move on; the work and the beauty were never just for ourselves in the end. Hopefully there is something left of us as we move on that continues to be a blessing to others - things that we worked on and enjoyed and that now someone else will discover and treasure and shape and improve. And since we'll be nearby we can at least drive past and see and remember....
we are doing the very same things Will, we leave a Japanese maple that has grown over 25 years into this gnarled ancient oriental gem, a smoke bush tree (planted because we had never seen one before) a simple Barlett pear because we planted three cherry trees that died in three subsequent years in the same spot, a rhodo amid our oriental stone garden off our patio and flowers everywhere that rise in spring to say, yes life does go on in newness by a singularly unseen grace. Harvey Mozolak
ReplyDeleteHave you decided where you are going to live in STL? When we were there we examined the traffic patterns in the morning and saw that south on I-55 just north of Arnold was the best option at the time (gosh that was 12 years ago...I suspect much has changed since then). Off course proximity to the Lutheran High School and grade school played the bigger role. We bought a home off of the Butler Hill exit which fit the bill for all. Lutheran South, Washington Lutheran and I drove in to a feed mill just off Kingshighway and Oleatha. Never took more than 20 minutes.
ReplyDeleteHarvey, that sounds beautiful.
ReplyDeleteDixie, we'll actually be living still in Hamel - next door to Cindi's mom and dad.
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ReplyDeleteWill, your post brings to mind a beautiful poem by Chad Walsh. It ties in so beautifully the creaturely joys and gifts of this world with the promises of life together in the "life of the world to come."
ReplyDeleteJon
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FOR EVA
MY WIFE
Look at this moment hard so you will know it
When you meet it again. It has no clear
Artistic corners to mark it off and name it;
Yet it is yours; you must be set to claim it
How many thousand thousand years from here
When God at last will lastingly bestow it.
There is the broken fence I helped you over;
This locust tree—notice the blackened crown,
And the long rift that lightning left—this field
With limestone bones half dressed, revealed
Where little gullies eat the flesh; and down
The hill the milky way of faint white clover.
Look farther down, the chestnut lot is there.
Change is permitted there. The bones of blight
Shall be delivered from the foreign death.
The spirit is another name for breath,
And it shall breathe rough leaves and waves of white
Blossoms to break in spray on the blue air.
Between us and the trees of transient black
Mark well the little farmhouse and the smoke
That rises in a slowly widening wreath;
We shall not go to see who lives beneath;
Nor shall the ropeswing from the hovering oak
Take you from me and bring you laughing back.
All these can wait, but now look well and see
Not what I am in dreams or memories,
But as I am, remember me and keep
The memory through any age of sleep
So when you waken with the chestnut trees
You will not stand, a stranger, here with me.
My distant cousin owned a world class nursery which he had to close thanks to our collapsing economy.
ReplyDeleteHe still closes his emails with the line:
"A society grows great when old men plant trees in the shade of which they shall never sit."