To Look Up for Flowers

Your feet shuffle along the small town old American sidewalk, your hands buried inside your fleece jacket. You see lone weeds squeezing themselves up between the cracks and since you feel nice today you don’t stomp on them. After all, you remind yourself, weeds can one day be flowers, too. And you like flowers. At least today.

So you look up. Maybe you missed some flowers? But all you see is a great big building. It has a fancy name but you don’t need to read it. You already know what it is. It’s been there since about the time your father was born. It's old. And brick. Then, as you ponder this silly thought, like a gift, you trip. A tree root jumbled up the sidewalk in a place you didn’t expect. And you fall.

If you hadn’t fallen, you might not have looked anywhere but forward. If you hadn’t listened to your heart, you might have just continued to walk with your head down, avoiding the root and the fall altogether. But you didn’t. You looked up for flowers. And sometimes, as I am sure someone's grandma used to say, falling can be a blessing in disguise.

The patch of grass is bright and dew-strewn green. The poppies are a vibrant Chinese red and you swear they are laughing. The door is purple. The most rich and velvet purple you have ever seen. And behind that door, the door you might have missed had you not fallen, is a house of magic and a family….are you ready for this…of love. To think you might have missed all this had you not looked up for flowers today!

But we shan't think of that any more. Nope. We want to get inside.

You didn’t know your windshield desperately needed you to push the lever to 'defrost'. You didn’t even realize you were gazing through a fog. Until, you walked in…

My words are little black squiggles on this gooey plastic screen and I will freely admit that they are only capable of dancing around the magic I felt that day. I may be a writer but as daddy always said, no one, not even he, can make a coon dog sing.

Little black squiggles...speak:

Colors. Shapes. Imaginariums for my eyes and creativarians for my soul. What is that I feel swirling around my head, laughing and twirling and pumping my heart up so big that I think I must cry? A little boy with a sparkle trailing behind him like a comet, giggles as he runs by. His mama, following behind him, reminds him to tuck in his wings, that guests have arrived and not everyone understands. She smiles at me when she sees my wet eyes. 'On second thought,' she says like an angel herself, 'let them flutter.' But he already knew.

Sometimes we fall in order to meet unexpected, beautiful gifts. But may I remind you? Of what, you quietly say? That the only real fall is when we forget to open our hearts to see the treasures, the magic that has always been there waiting for us to remember it. Thank you, Kristin. Thank you for all your magic, for all your love. I'm soOO glad I fell.