Post by Ken_Nye on May 30, 2008 20:25:05 GMT -5
I am standing in the presence
of a gift from God --
a grandson, three hours old.
He opens his eyes periodically, between yawns,
and makes silent exclamations with his mouth --
"Oh's'" and "Ah's" and quizzical looks.
He isn't talking much,
hasn't figured it out yet.
But he is a wonder --
tiny fingers with even tinier
skin creases over the knuckles,
(just like ours), but I need a magnifying glass
to see them clearly;
miniature reproductive device
at the bottom of his belly,
looking like a petcock on a pipe valve.
He is a miracle.
Yesterday I sat with my mother
who is about to return to the place
my grandson just left.
She has been talking
in her dreams to her mother,
who is anxious for her girl to join her.
But Mom is still reluctant to cross over.
So she clings to life with the tough tenacity
of a Nebraska girl raised in the depression.
I am immersed in both
the beginning and the ending,
in the hopes and dreams that
will shape the history that will be my grandson,
and in the events that formed the history
of my mother's life and defined who she was.
But, as I watch the arrival of this
little bundle of love, gazing with blooming adoration at his mother and,
at the same time,
the gradual, ephemeral
slide of my mother's loving heart back
into the eternal soul of the universe,
it becomes clear to me
that there is no beginning,
nor is there an ending.
There are simply events such as these that
remind us that we are,
each of us,
part of the Eternal.
.
of a gift from God --
a grandson, three hours old.
He opens his eyes periodically, between yawns,
and makes silent exclamations with his mouth --
"Oh's'" and "Ah's" and quizzical looks.
He isn't talking much,
hasn't figured it out yet.
But he is a wonder --
tiny fingers with even tinier
skin creases over the knuckles,
(just like ours), but I need a magnifying glass
to see them clearly;
miniature reproductive device
at the bottom of his belly,
looking like a petcock on a pipe valve.
He is a miracle.
Yesterday I sat with my mother
who is about to return to the place
my grandson just left.
She has been talking
in her dreams to her mother,
who is anxious for her girl to join her.
But Mom is still reluctant to cross over.
So she clings to life with the tough tenacity
of a Nebraska girl raised in the depression.
I am immersed in both
the beginning and the ending,
in the hopes and dreams that
will shape the history that will be my grandson,
and in the events that formed the history
of my mother's life and defined who she was.
But, as I watch the arrival of this
little bundle of love, gazing with blooming adoration at his mother and,
at the same time,
the gradual, ephemeral
slide of my mother's loving heart back
into the eternal soul of the universe,
it becomes clear to me
that there is no beginning,
nor is there an ending.
There are simply events such as these that
remind us that we are,
each of us,
part of the Eternal.
.
