There’s a pair of smallish work boots in the spare bedroom and a few other knick-knacks she left when she was last here.  There’s a big smile she left in my heart too.  It’s mine now and it will always be, and it’s one of the few things that hasn’t been claimed by cobwebs.  Literal and figurative cobwebs – but those ginkgo supplements do help. I doubt if she thinks about this old Ozark farm very often these days. 

Maybe someday my fond memories of her will fade like everything else seems to as I arrive at a stage of my journey through this existence I used to consider to be life.  Having turned seventy years old last year, I guess I’ve finally come to realize life isn’t what I once thought it is supposed to be – in a way it’s sort of disappointing, but in another way, it’s sort of a relief.  I no longer have to try and live up to a lot of the expectations I always felt I needed to achieve.  In a way, it’s like taking a burden of pride off my shoulders.  Priorities change.  Many unfulfilled dreams have long been packed away – mostly in silent corners of outbuildings, likely never to be reopened, never to be realized, nor indeed remembered, once I take that last hike. Anyways, most of those expectations were those I placed on myself, so I’m free to discard them at will.

On the brighter side, there are some advantages to arriving at geezerhood.  Things that used to be so important to me now seem to carry less significance.  I’m able to “zoom out” and get an albeit belated, fresh perspective.  I’m sure she’ll get there someday too, but for now she’s in that glorious process of spreading those precious little wings – I remember that phase of my own life, and that of my daughters, and at the most significant level – as it should be – I’m able to excuse her for having left me to wipe a tear away once in a while as I reflect on tidbits of her presence with me – like those dusty work boots.  And that priceless smile.

She’s away in college and life is undoubtedly teaching her those lessons us aged creatures have learned through the years, and when she gets to the point in life where I am, she’ll surely understand that the lessons she learned outside the classroom are among the most important of them all.  I hope some of the things she learned out in the woods when those boots were on her feet will be among them.  Of course, she’d never be caught wearing work boots where she is now – we bought them for her when she was up here on the farm visiting.  They kept her feet warm and saved her toes from accidentally dropped firewood as she helped me with chores.  Maybe she’ll make it back up here while I’m still around.  What a lift for this old heart to see her!

I remember when we lived out in Colorado when she was just a pup.  Her family lived with me then, in fact she and her mom had lived with me since she was born.  She was maybe four or five years old.  Around Pueblo where we lived, there isn’t much rain – it’s semi-arid prairie country – but we did get some rain in the spring and it filled up ditches and holes, only to rapidly evaporate when the blazing Southern Colorado sun returned.  The creatures of the prairie take advantage of the sparse rainfall, mostly in reproductive pursuits, and little frogs lay thousands of eggs in every water hole – eggs which would quickly hatch.  We had one such waterhole in a ditch about a quarter of a mile down the dirt road from our place, and one day after a recent rain, she and I happened to walk by it and saw thousands of tiny tadpoles struggling in the muddy but still precious water.  By the time we saw them, the sun was already beating mercilessly on the rapidly drying terrain, and I casually mentioned to her that those little guys wouldn’t make it because the hole would dry up before they got grown.  Later that day and for the next several days I watched as she put a five-gallon bucket on her little wagon and filled it with water from the garden hose and a little biped mammal trudged down the road to pour it in the puddle so the diminutive baby amphibians could survive.  What a heart God put in that little angel!

Her mom got married to a fine young fellow and they eventually got a family started and moved away – tore a big chunk out of my old ticker to have to part with them.  These days she goes to college and plays the clarinet in the college wind orchestra.  She picked it up in high school and got really good at it.  For anyone who might get the impression that I’m bragging on my granddaughter, well ok I am, so I’ll add that in her senior year in the Lufkin high school she made first chair in the all-Texas State band.  I guess that means she was the best high school clarinet player in the whole state. 

Here in the Ozarks the dogwoods are about to open out their blooms, I expect in about three weeks.  Their buds are swelling, and the woods are going to come alive with rivers of snow-white flowers flowing brightly along all the roads.  Weather conditions in the spring vary with rainfall, late cold spells, and such, so some years the blooms are more extravagant than others.  Though they are always pretty, a couple of years ago we had a really spectacular bloom.  Up until then, I had never seen such a beautiful sight in the woods.  It’s just impossible to describe – there’s a touching emotional component to such a sight.  It really puts you in a mood to tell God how much you appreciate His grace for giving us things like that on this old earth.  Alyssa wasn’t here to see it, and pictures just don’t do it justice.  Maybe on some spring break down the road she’ll make it here to enjoy a dogwood bloom.  I get this mental image of her wearing her bulky work boots out in the woods, watching in silence and awe as a spring breeze gently caresses those boughs of snowy decadence.  That smile of hers would shine for sure!

I have to close here and get to some spring chores.  Though I love her and miss her, at my age I understand how life works, and with the wonderful company of two of my daughters, a few precious in-and-out grandkids, a great son-in-law, and my beloved dogs I’m not really lonely.  Alyssa has a boyfriend now and lots of things going on in her world.  She’ll (hopefully) finish college and get on with her life as an adult, maybe raise some kids of her own, and who knows?  I might still be around to enjoy them every now and then.  

But for now, there’s firewood to split and a garden to till – life in the Ozarks goes on.

MK