Unusual gifts

Sharran · Joined: 07 Jan 2009 Posts: 50

I figure we can look at every event in one way or another. In real life, I am the one who most often chooses the road less traveled. In coming to terms with this process we call aging, I think I have gained an insight, one I never could claim years ago, back in those days when I was old. (I am much younger now, you see.)

So what have I learned, now that I am young again? Well, when I look back at destructive events, I no longer ask: Why? I have learned to look for the gifts that might have been left behind. Last September, as far inland as Kentucky has remained all these years, Hurricane Ike blew through here with a wrath strong enough to uproot the very soul of Kentucky. My cats and I hung on for dear life for several hours. Ike left a mass of destruction in his wake, and it seemed that all of it ended up in my yard. Eighty five hours later, when we finally had electricity again, and I felt as if I were back among the living, I took a look around me. My little blue bird house remained intact, but the pole it had been on was never to be found again. It had been torn from its concrete base, and only the splinters remained. It was the bird house that was most important, though, because my husband had given it to me many years ago, and we had watched dozens of new blue babies as they learned to fly from that little bird house. So nature's gift to me on that day was memories, in the form of a little blue bird house with not a piece missing.

We had another storm recently, some called it the Ice Storm of the Century, and it might have been. I had never seen anything like it. This most recent storm left me without electricity for two hundred twelve hours and 37 minutes. You better believe I counted! Now it is a week later, and I walk amidst the branches and logs that litter my back yard. But my front yard and driveway are clean, completely free of debris, and I have not picked up a branch. On the first Sunday after the storm, our weather was cold but sunny. I was still having to stay with friends in the evening, but I was trying to stay at home during the day, emptying the fridge of spoiled food, trying to keep my two kitties warm, and the water from freezing. Broken trees blocked my driveway and I could not get my car to the street. My friends were bringing me home each morning and picking me up before dark, since I had no way to drive my car.

In the middle of removing foul food from the freezer, I heard a little knock on the door. It was Brady, the little 7 year old whom I had met when he visited me at Halloween. He didn't live near me, but his dad was one of my former students from a life time ago. "Hi, Brownie," said Brady, "I am going to clean your driveway!"

And so he did. Brady and his dad not only cleared my driveway, but they picked up all the limbs and branches from my front yard. Soon other neighbors joined in and there was a full work crew here. "Just checking on you", they said. And all Brady asked for in return was a hug.
He surely did get a hug. And as he walked away, he turned and yelled: "Hey Brownie, ya got wheels again!!"

Yep, I had wheels again. What a sweetheart, what a gift!

This weekend was Valentine's Day, and of course I am widowed and live alone. I had read an article this morning about plants that have heart shaped leaves, and this afternoon when I was thinking about it, I looked around. Do you know that one of the most common house plants is the philodendron, and even if there is no other living plant in a home, there most likely will be a philodendron. It's leaves are heart shaped. I looked at the old rubber plant that used to live in my mother's home. It has huge leathery green leaves, all heart shaped. The little leaves that form on the stems of eucalyptus are heart shaped. I didn't get a valentine today, but I have hearts all around me. Gifts of nature.

It's a learning process, you see, now that I am younger than I used to be.....whenever a crisis blocks my way, I look for the gifts, because I know they will be there.

I figure that we can look at any event in one way or another. Most of the time we can laugh or we can cry in the midst of any situation. I hope I will always be able to find the gifts that the storms leave behind.

Sometimes we have to get beyond the aging process before we are young enough to find the gifts.

©Sharon Brown 2/09