My Pa

A woman reminisces about her grandfather and how life comes full circle.

My Pa

            There is something to be said for the way a breeze hits a field of sunflowers or the way the wind chooses to aid in the depositing of certain wildflowers. Everything in nature relies on a delicate balance. Everything needs to move in such a perfect way in order to produce the life that it does. These are all things my grandfather used to tell me. I called him “Pa”. I still call him that to this day though he passed many years ago. When I kneel down in my garden I think of him. When my back screams and my knees ache and pop, when my wrists grind and my elbows click I think of my Pa. I think of him because of all the times I joined him in the garden. I would sit on a wooden bench on the edge of the plowed soil, my feet dangling, my toes barely touching the ground. He was an older man even then but there was no limit to his patience or his love for me and all God’s creatures.

            I would come see my Pa in Paoli, Indiana every spring and every summer for a week. Every day in the spring we would go out and tend the garden. He always told everyone ‘we’ would tend the garden but he rarely asked me to do any of the work. Occasionally he would ask me to carry a pail or to fetch some tools but if I tried to get dirty in the garden he warned with the threat of my grandmother’s wrath and that kept me on my bench. The sun was always warm and the breeze always had the faintest chill. We would talk about everything from the trees, the flowers (mainly pretty red and pink ones), boys (hogwash apparently) and anything else under the sun. Every so often my grandmother would bring out some sandwiches and lemonade and he would take a break and sit with me. I would look for a long time at the wrinkles on his hands and the sweat on his brow, the white of his hair, his smile and all the crinkles that remained even when he was done smiling. My Pa was the best man I ever knew and no man since has ever come close.

            This morning my grand-daughter came from Indianapolis to spend her spring break with me. I moved here to be close when Pa passed and never moved back out of Paoli. For weeks I was troubled over how I would entertain her. She is part of a world I barely know anything about. She carries devices I can barely hope to understand and she listens to songs I would’ve been whooped good for even thinking about. Then I remembered my Pa’s old bucket in the shed and I knew exactly what we would spend her spring break doing. I dragged the old bench from the shed and carried the bucket to the edge of the walkway. I pulled out all the proper tools and we took a trip to the store.

I took a few flowers from around town that reminded me of Pa’s garden. Luckily the gentleman at the plant farm knew their names; baby’s breath, black-eye susan, harebell, coneflower and bearded iris just to name a few. Top soil, fertilizer, seed, the packages changed and the colors were more vibrant than I remember but the products are pretty much the same as I remember them.

My grand-daughter must have asked me a hundred times what we were doing. After I told her to leave her do-dads in the house she came out and I knelt down in the grass and took the hoe in my hand. There were the old wrinkles I remembered so fondly and before long the sweat came too. After a moment I noticed how quiet she was and I looked over at her. She was smiling and looked up at the sun. Her legs were dangling and as they swung I could see that her toes were barely touching the grass. The sun was warm and there was just the faintest chill in the air. With a laugh I said to her, “Did I ever tell you about my Pa?”

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

I find such beauty in this tale, seeing the cycle repeated, offering that which is tried and true to a new grandchild. If we could go back to Pa's youth, I'll bet we'd find another sage teacher, showing him how it's done. Revealing what in life is good and precious.