Infinite Possibilities

Dad sat outside directing me in what yard work needed to be done for much of the weekend. Since it’s spring and almost Memorial Day there was a lot to do outside. There’s a saying up here, you don’t plant anything outside until after Memorial Day. With the late frost we had last week, no truer statement could be made, this year at least. Needless to say it was a busy weekend. I tell Dad I’m just keeping up on the maintenance until he can do it himself. It does not matter if this actually happens or not. What matters is the hope in infinite possibilities.

While we sat outside, enjoying the warmth of the sun, I noticed Dad appeared frustrated. I say appeared, when really I knew he was and has been. He tried to tell me something and got stumped on part of the sentence, eventually putting his head down shaking it when the words wouldn’t come out. I can only imagine and even then have no clue what that’s like. The usual phrases, “It’s ok, it’s going to be ok, you’ll get there, give it time” resound like a broken record, repeated so often you forget you say them. They’ve lost meaning by now. I looked around Dad’s backyard. I looked at his garden, with his prize asparagus bed that he cultivated for two years before being able to pick any. I looked at his flower beds, with its assortment of peonies, lilies, clematis vines and such, all planted with no rhyme or reason, yet so pretty to look at and be around.  I looked at all the work he has put into this house and yard to make it his own and turned to him saying, “Think of it this way. You could be dead right now. But you’re not are you? You’re alive and improving everyday whether you see it, feel it or not. You need to stop looking at what was and look at what is. You need to stop looking at what you can’t do and look at what you can. You are alive right now and you are sitting outside on this gorgeous spring day in your backyard, watching the birds, taking in and enjoying what you’ve created. There is nothing else but this moment and this is a great moment isn’t it?” He looked at me and nodded because he knew it to be true, because it is true.

Happy spring everyone.