Sometimes, a moment is nearly impossible to capture in its full spectrum of wonder. As I drove away from my childhood home this afternoon, having dropped off Oak to spend some time with his grandparents while Robby and I worked, I glanced out my window to see my dad and my son sitting under a tree in the side yard. They had been wandering outside a while before I left, so to spot them in surprise from this distance felt like glimpsing a secret gift.
I could not see what they examined together, but it was clear in their mutual posture that both were engrossed in their common activity. Tears caught in my throat at this fleeting moment of sweetness: the man who has tended to me with the boy I tend, both tending to the other. I was suspended in a space between what has been given to me and what I have given, from and to my past and future. Removed from the center of that cyclical lineage, time collapsed to a still point of amazement as I felt the tug of eternal threads that tie me to these two beings.
Later, when I returned, Dad and Oak showed me the treasures they gathered while walking around the yard: several lovely pinecones of varying shapes and a twig of holly and berries. Spirals and evergreen sprigs - infinite patterns, eternal life, symbols for an afternoon of connections made near and far in time and space. What a joy to know I am part of it. What a gift to watch it unfold beyond me in every direction. What a blessing to know who we are to one another.
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