“Life spilled out across the floor, like coins falling from a pocket…”
Steven Charleston
Sometimes, when I take off my jeans at night the little silver heart, the small amethyst stone, and commemorative coins fall out of my pocket and I bend to search for them. If some of your pocket full of change falls to the floor when you are counting out the amount needed at the store, you chase it down and pick it up. In like manner, our lives are spilling out and rolling away, perhaps unnoticed.
This is the season of remembering, of celebration, of beginnings and endings. When my cousins and I gather on Memorial weekend to honor our relatives in common, I become aware of how much of my life has spilled out and rolled away, and how little I was aware of the treasures that were mine.
There are very few names on stones in the Seneca cemetery that I don’t recognize. Many of those folks I never met, but my dad and grandmother spoke of them, and told of their accomplishments and foibles. Various family members and close neighbors rest there, as well as the people who owned businesses and taught school when I was growing up. You couldn’t get away with much in that small town; all the adults knew you by name, as well as most of your relatives. We kids were safe when unsupervised because someone was always coming down the street or looking out a window.
The years when my own children were growing up, blew by like a tumbleweed. It’s only now, when the family gathers and reminisces, that I realize how many coins I didn’t pick up. Maybe the blessing of old age and infirmity is that we have time to recall things we tucked away for later, and examine our present circumstances with gratitude.
As we celebrate graduations we recall our own eagerness to get out in the real world, and realize how little we knew of the joy and sorrow that awaited us, or the strength we would find within to navigate it all.
Graduation announcements on my fridge have been replaced with wedding invitations and I become aware of how my own weddings were barely a blink, passing with the momentum to move ahead. So, I wish for those brides and grooms a time to reflect and take stock of what they bring to the union, and what gifts they can use as their families grow.
It’s turn out time in ranch country. We look ahead with hope but, in this drought year, with a lot of anxiety. And yet, there are shining moments in each day that we must not let fall like coins rolling out of sight. A sunset, the patter of a shower on the roof, even if short. The scent of rain, even when it barely hits the ground. The songs of meadowlarks and the wet dog that ran through the sprinkler and then comes by for a cuddle. Supper on the stove, and the family all home.
Meet me here next week and meanwhile do your best not to blink and miss any of it.