Change Is Hard

Earlier today I attempted to write a post about Father’s Day and my Dad. But the words were flat and unworthy of him, so I put it away for awhile. Instead, Katie and I went to Springfield Oaks, a park nearby and walked. In some ways that was hard, because many families were out there celebrating Father’s Day and I was alone with my dog. But in other ways it was just what I needed. We only walked about a mile, but that’s further than Katie is used to. Half a mile down a big hill, and half a mile back up. Right now she is curled up on the floor near me sound asleep.

Near the half way point of our walk we sat for awhile under a young maple tree and watched the clouds blow across the tops of hills nearby. I thought that if I had painted that scene, the clouds, hills, trees, as they were it would look childish and fake, yet there it was in real life. And as we sat there I began to muse about another friend’s writings that I had read today about his Dad and God, and the times he felt both their presences with him. He described one instance when he saw five eagles in flight as he rounded a hill on one of his runs near Traverse City as a time when he knew his Dad and God were both with him.

I too associate eagles with my Dad. Shortly after Dad was killed my husband and I were sitting in my brother’s house on a lake while everyone else was off doing things. Though I had never seen a bald eagle there, nor heard that they were near, one swooped in and sat on a tree out near the water, watching the house. The eagle sat there most of the day, long enough for my brother to arrive back home and witness it as well. I thought then that if that eagle wasn’t Dad, it was certainly sent by God and Dad to check on us and give us some sort of comfort.

So on this Father’s Day I sat in the shade of the tree, watching clouds skid by and remembered Dad, and that day and that eagle. I figure God must be good at multi-tasking because Dad died the day before the tsunami that hit Indonesia in 2004, and surely He was busy with many families who were hurting just as much as we. But somehow He found the time to send one small family in a little town in rural Alabama a measure of comfort.

Today I think they were both with me again, in those hills and clouds that Katie and I watched from under the comforting shade of that young maple tree.

Early this warm and muggy morning I headed to the grocery store to find things to make husband’s lunch for the weekend. He works 12 hours each day of this weekend, and there’s no cafeteria available. Flank steak, fresh green beans, roasted potatoes, salad with fresh tomatoes, Italian bread. Sounds good!

As I emerged from the frigid cold of the grocery store into the already sultry heat of the parking lot I was reminded of my mother who, even after living in Alabama for twenty-five years, was constantly surprised by the heat. The heat of an Alabama morning catches you off guard when you’ve lived most of your life in the Michigan north where mornings are generally fresh and cool. Mom used to giggle a bit when she’d catch herself surprised, say it never ceased to amaze her when she walked out of a concert hall late in the evening and found the outside air so much warmer than inside the air conditioned building. She’d forget, you see, that she lived in the deep South, and the warm air embracing her in the mornings and evenings was a friendly reminder of the big change she and Dad had made.

So this morning when I was surprised by the heat of the day so early I thought of Mom and giggled a bit to myself. Though I never lived in Alabama, have lived in Michigan my whole life, I felt, for just a minute, like I was home.