Rocks, Leaves, Flowers, Treasure
by Susie Lloyd in Family on Thursday, May 27, 2010 6:00 AM
The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn:
God’s in His heaven —
All’s right with the world!
Today was one of those idyllic days that the poet Browning wrote about. It comes back to me every year on days like these. Days when all bird-kind unites at first light to sing you awake with the Halleluiah Chorus.
Today, I could have added – if it hadn’t messed up the rhyme scheme – Spring’s at Tuesday, Tuesday’s at morn, Morning’s at 68 degrees ...
Tuesday is my weekly free day. It’s the day my school age children go to their homeschool co-op. Instead of me standing over their lessons, other people do it. I get to spend a day frivously enjoying the company of my unschool age children. Or cleaning the house.
Today, I ignored the reprimands of the grisly bathroom: “We have a scouring date. Have you forgotten?”
“Later,” I promised. It would be there when I returned. The wooded park across the street, the sunlight filtering through spaces in the new leaves overhead, was now or never. Day after day, I look longingly at this beauty but do not enter in. Such terribly important things I have to do at home.
Three-year-old Joe and five-year-old Melanie ran ahead of me over the rock road, down the muddy path and into the wooded park.
They arrived first and were disappointed that the torrential rains from a couple of nights ago had flooded the bridge leading to the colorful plastic playground equipment. Unless I went back for the car, we were destined to stay on our side of the wide, rushing creek.
No going back. No car. No plastic playground equipment. Instead, we climbed down onto the creek bank, where the water was low and played on nature’s play ground.
There were rocks. Dirty rocks. Lots and lots of dirty rocks. Joe was happy. Rocks make great projectiles. Projectiles make great splashes. Great splashes produce screams.
There were weeds. Five year old Melanie found nameless varieties of rough greenery growing in clumps apart from the rocks. I showed her a name I knew, elephant ear. I picked a leaf and threw it into the rushing water and showed her how it floated downstream. Then I told her story of St. Frances Cabrini back in her native Italy as a little girl. She made paper boats and filled them with violets and floated them downstream, dreaming that they were missionaires. She grew up to become one of them, voyaging across the Atlantic, comforting the Italian community here, so poor, so far from home, so in danger of forgetting their family culture.
As we lingered by the stream, small flowers made themselves known bit by bit. A patch of buttercups here, violents in purple, white and pink sparsely growing at the base of trees there, and – my favorite - tiny lavender somethings, only about a centimeter in diameter. You have to pick one up and hold it close to notice the hand painted streaks of dark purple contrast on their petals. They were right under our feet all the time.
I showed her one and told her of how St. Therese thought of herself as one of those flowers. So small and insignificant as to be crushed unnoticed under foot but on closer look, so delicately crafted in every detail.
The three of us gathered some of these to put in the elephant ear and float away like St. Frances Cabrini’s missionaries. Joe threw his in small fistfuls which were swiftly hurtled down stream, engulfed and drowned. (More screams.) Mel took more care to arrange the flowers in her boats before setting them in the water. They lapped against the bank restlessly until I showed her how to catch a wave and make them sail.
The two kids ran back and forth for more rocks, leaves and flowers, shouting enough to bother a nearby fisherman if conditions had been still. The rapid falling water softened their cries. I rested on a sunny rock wall and invited the sun to tan my legs, winter-white after so many months sheltered and imprisoned.
Such terribly important things we had done those few months: reading, studying, filling in workbooks. In itself it wasn’t drudgery. It was just that I’d been doing it for two decades. Two down, two more to go. What was it for? Easy. It was and still is for home and family, to maintain a family culture. Even if there are long moments when that culture, that delicate, hand crafted thing, goes unnoticed and unappreciated in my man-made working environment, it is there. It is there in my clean, comfortable home that I’ve nagged everybody to help me make clean and comfortable. It is there even when the things I do are terribly, terribly important. So terribly important that nobody enjoys them. My family culture, which I’m so in danger of forgetting, is there.
Today, nature was missionary, in her violets, in her leafy boats, in her muddy rocks. We could pick weeds that no one planted. We could throw rocks that no one paid for. We could enjoy the smell of fish without thinking about having to scour it away. The colorful plastic playground that had seemed so important was forgotten, barred to us by the overflowing water.
God’s in his heaven. All’s right with the world.
—Senior writer Susie Lloyd’s latest book is Bless Me Father For I Have Kids.
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