Slice of Life: My Mother's Birthday

This afternoon my father and I planted flowers while my mother napped. My father dug the holes and I squatted before each one, laying in a phlox plant, covering it with dirt, watering it. I had a vision, a sudden grip of fear, as he dug the third hole: what if my father should suddenly fall? What if he were to drop his shovel, grasp his chest, and gasp? Those are thoughts I have to shake off, blink away, dismantle.

Today is my mother's 84th birthday. While she slept and after we planted a dozen phlox for her, my father and I sat together on the patio. "I've lost the gift I bought your mother," he said to me. "I hid it somewhere so she wouldn't find it. I've looked everywhere, and I just don't know where I put it." I wish I could help him. I wish he'd told me where he put it when he did, but chances are I would have forgotten his hiding place, as well.

I put my hand on top of his. We watched a mockingbird alight on the fence. The colors were too rich for a photograph, and although I thought about taking a picture of the pair of jeans and seven white socks hanging on the clothes line, I memorized it all instead. My father's hand. The pink and white dogwoods and a grass so green I had to stop looking, and couldn't look away. The yellow pansies and my father's blue shorts. The smell of leather and the red handle of his pruners.

I can't help it. I memorize this moment because I am too aware that someday they will end, these warm spring days planting flowers with my father while my mother naps.

The grass is greener than ever and my mother's eyes are blue. The phlox are periwinkle and purple. On the clothesline my father's jeans flap in the wind.

Linked up on Amy's Finer Things Friday

Crossing Over

Last night, my little girl crossed over from Explorer (4th-6th grades) to Pioneer (7th and 8th grades) at our American Heritage Girls ceremony. I don't have any pictures because that's one of the downfalls of being an emcee: you can't exactly whip out the camera in the middle of a solemn ceremony. Also, our sashes didn't come with the rest of our badge order, so our 9 new Pioneers didn't get to have their sashes presented to them. But still, it was a milestone for these girls, and I'm so proud of my daughter.

I do have photos from our very first awards ceremony in 2003, when all of our girls were given their Joining Awards and membership pins.

She's the third one from the left in this group of first-grade girls. Four of this first group of girls crossed over last night.

And here she is last year on the night of our ceremony. She's grown several inches since then. In the rush of things yesterday, I didn't even have the foresight to take a few photos of her before she traded in her blue vest.

Between Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, and American Heritage Girls, our weeks can be crazy twice each month. And with Randy's being Cubmaster and my being co-coordinator of our AHG troop, some weeks our heads our positively spinning. We wonder what possessed us to schedule both the Cub Scout end-of-the-year picnic and crossing over during the same week as the AHG spring awards ceremony, and both topped off with the Boy Scout camporee over the weekend. What were we thinking?

But Scouting is one of the finer things in life for our family. We have put so much energy and time into the programs because we clearly see the fantastic benefits and blessings that have come about as a result of our participation.

But I'm happy for just a little break.

(Check out more finer things in life at Amy's Finer Things Friday.)