Weekends with Dad can be bittersweet. In my memory, Dad is a tall, devil-may-care man with a huge appetite for life. As he enters his mid-90s, things are changing, and sometimes it’s hard to see how my memory doesn’t match my current reality.
But there is so much beauty in the passage of time, too. I try to remember that it’s common for age to show true value. Well-constructed furniture with dovetail joints instead of flat-pack particleboard. Vintage twirly dresses made of sturdy fabrics with generous seam allowances instead of fast fashion destined for the landfill in three months. Things – and people – don’t acquire deep, lasting value if they are flimsy and my father is a rock you can build a life on.
So while he was napping, I went out looking for a few things.
My sister, brother, and I used to walk to elementary school. It housed kindergarten through eighth grade at the time and the “new” part had just opened up in the mid-70s when I started school there. It was so close to home that I used to tell myself that I could smell Mom’s tollhouse oatmeal cookies when they came out of the oven. Probably not, but I’m glad they still have the original bell there.
To get to school, I had to walk through the big front yard which featured a number of impressively-large trees, like the crepe myrtle at the top of the post, which is at the height of its summer gorgeousness right now. But all the trees – the massively tall pecans, a brooding evergreen, and a delightful Japanese weeping cherry that was my favorite book-reading tree – they all paled next to the jaw-dropping specimen of Magnolia grandiflora at the corner of the yard. This tree looked as if its roots could very well go deep enough into the earth to reach the very center of the globe – and that was more than fifty years ago. Now, it’s an ecosystem unto itself. This is a tree that Knows Things. Click here for a tour.
Age has value. It looks different from youth, to be sure, but is no less beautiful for that.
May your week bring you joy.
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