In My Prayer...

...I ask for many years on this planet, with my beloved people. More time. Years and years, to see what happens. To love better, to love more...to lose fear, to be lavishly generous. To really listen, to myself and others.

My eyes close...and she comes. Her curls bobbing, she reaches around to grab my hand....

...she is not real, not yet, perhaps years from now or maybe forever in my dreams. Perhaps she is an angel. No matter, she has a message, an important one.

Her sing song child's voice beckons...I want to show you something.

And I go, letting her lead our way to the dock.

There we stand together as she fidgets with her sunglasses, decked out in a pink and green bead necklace. Lotion smeared across her nose, dried chocolate ice cream on her lips.

The lake shimmers, dancing sparkles of light. Voices from a boat rise and fall, merry and happy. Good time sounds. Music booms too, but fading as the party boat travels further out on the water.

We are left with the wind in the trees. This small girl and me, her coming barely up to my waist.

She looks around, sucking on a wisp of blond hair. Her skin bronzed and sun kissed, young in every way but a crone of understanding, something ancient in her ways. I love her deeply, and look down at her.

Do you remember how scared that bad tumor made you? When you stood on the deck with Cello the dog, two days before the surgery that took your leg? When the world didn't make sense, not at all, Grandma? When you looked out at the water and cried and cried and cried some more?

My head nods, yes I do. Surely I do.

And do you love the cabin behind us? Do you? Do you love it?

My head nods, yes I do. Surely I do.

It took a long time to build that cabin, and Grandpa worked hard to make it happen for us, on Great Grandpa's land. But now we play games and jump in the water and laugh a lot too. Do you see all that good stuff, Grandma?

My head nods, yes I do. Surely I do.

Her small arm motions to the lake, all around us, wishing me to understand something important.

Look at the water...this place loves you, it loves all of us. Can you feel our big, squishy, messy love? Love that tastes like a sour tart sometimes, but mostly a sweet one? Our forever love, the kind that never, ever leaves our hearts. No matter what happens, Grandma?

My head nods, yes I do. Surely I do.

Her voice becomes soft, but more certain...

....love like that takes a long time, years and years...and good stuff happens, but not fast sometimes, Grandma.

No, not fast sometimes, my own voice whispers...

...and the little girl fades away. My eyes open to the saw dusty cabin, needing floors and faucets and paint, still needing so much, so much work. I look down to my leg, the clunky first prosthetic leg, the one before my fancy, more permanent leg. Remembering the physical therapy that is such a boring grind, I recall dashing into a store quickly, or dashing anywhere, really.

So Rilke's quote comes for me: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps, you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

Rousing from prayer, my head turns to this photo of my older son as a child, walking with determination toward some destination unknown, along with nieces and nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles, parents, sisters and brothers too. Generations fall, trip, soar over the other, taking our place in something big, our big squishy love...

...and I hear my great grandfather's advice from long ago, "In times of trouble remember to plant your gardens and have your babies."

Then almost on cue, Peter calls to me from the dock...

...Julie, I have something to show you.