grass … and …”
“Mr. Harding, please forgive me, for I am just an ignorant old cleaning woman, but you must go to the grave. You must. Not for them. For you! I remember my mother, God rest her soul, telling me an old Irish tale that she said had been passed on to her by her grandmother in County Galway. It seems that a young woman in a small village on the coast lost her only son in a fall from a cliff, and in the months that followed his burial she lived a life filled only with constant tears, anguish, heartbreak and mourning. When her dead son’s next birthday arrived, she resolved to spend the entire day at his grave, and on the way to the cemetery she stopped to buy some flowers from an old man in the village square. After paying for her cemetery posies she started to leave, but paused to watch the old flower merchant who was carefully picking all the dried leaves and stems from the lower portion of a potted plant that seemed to have no life. ‘Why are you wasting your time on that dead thing?’ she asked and he replied, ‘It is not dead. Oh, some of its leaves have finished with their lives, but see, up here, there is still some green showing in the stalk. I expect that with care and love this plant will live and produce flowers for many more years. Young lady,’ he said, ‘there are many people like plants. They suffer what is a terrible loss—perhaps a child or a wife or husband—and they allow what has happened to turn them into a shriveled stalk, empty of hope and life.On the other hand, there are many, don’t you know, who will suffer the dried-up parts to just drop off and then they go right on living and breathing and singing and smiling as they keep producing lovely flowers, year after year, just as long as God can use them.’ ”
“Mr. Harding,” Rose continued, sounding more and more like a stern first-grade teacher as she lifted the vacuum cleaner off the rug. “We already have more than enough plants that have perished, back there in the woods. I don’t want to see you shrivel up in sadness until you become one of them.”
Some time in the afternoon I remembered that I had promised to bring Rick’s almost-new baseball glove to Timothy. I went into my son’s room, walked directly to the closet without looking left or right and pushed open the sliding doors. The glove was resting on a shelf I had built low enough so that Rick could store some of his more prized possessions at a level he could reach instead of stashing everything under his bed and dresser. Beneath the glove were boxes of Chinese checkers, dominoes, Trivial Pursuit Jr. Edition and Lego. Alongside were brightly colored Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joe action figures mingling with missile launchers, helicopters and Pizza Throwers, all surrounding a towering brown cylinder filled with Tinkertoy parts. Then there were the three cardboard shoe boxes filled with baseball cards. I lifted one off the shelf and held it lovingly in my hand. How many hours had Rick sat at our kitchen table, carefully transferring cards from one indexed box to anotheras he continued to invest most of his allowance in his collection? I reached in and randomly pulled out a card: “NOLAN RYAN, Texas Rangers.” One of Rick’s favorite players. Mine too.
Timothy was waiting for me, pacing back and forth in the parking lot, when I arrived at exactly three-thirty as promised. He came racing over to my car, and as I stepped out, I flipped him the glove.
“Oh … wow … this is cool!” he exclaimed as he slid his tiny left hand into the leather finger slots. Then he pounded his clenched right fist, again and again, into the darker oiled palm of the glove as he flexed the heavy leather webbing that was between thumb and forefinger.
“Want to give it a tryout?” I asked.
“Okay!”
Bill West had all the team supplies and equipment in his car, but I had remembered to bring a baseball and my old glove. The two of us played catch in right field
“Mr. Harding, please forgive me, for I am just an ignorant old cleaning woman, but you must go to the grave. You must. Not for them. For you! I remember my mother, God rest her soul, telling me an old Irish tale that she said had been passed on to her by her grandmother in County Galway. It seems that a young woman in a small village on the coast lost her only son in a fall from a cliff, and in the months that followed his burial she lived a life filled only with constant tears, anguish, heartbreak and mourning. When her dead son’s next birthday arrived, she resolved to spend the entire day at his grave, and on the way to the cemetery she stopped to buy some flowers from an old man in the village square. After paying for her cemetery posies she started to leave, but paused to watch the old flower merchant who was carefully picking all the dried leaves and stems from the lower portion of a potted plant that seemed to have no life. ‘Why are you wasting your time on that dead thing?’ she asked and he replied, ‘It is not dead. Oh, some of its leaves have finished with their lives, but see, up here, there is still some green showing in the stalk. I expect that with care and love this plant will live and produce flowers for many more years. Young lady,’ he said, ‘there are many people like plants. They suffer what is a terrible loss—perhaps a child or a wife or husband—and they allow what has happened to turn them into a shriveled stalk, empty of hope and life.On the other hand, there are many, don’t you know, who will suffer the dried-up parts to just drop off and then they go right on living and breathing and singing and smiling as they keep producing lovely flowers, year after year, just as long as God can use them.’ ”
“Mr. Harding,” Rose continued, sounding more and more like a stern first-grade teacher as she lifted the vacuum cleaner off the rug. “We already have more than enough plants that have perished, back there in the woods. I don’t want to see you shrivel up in sadness until you become one of them.”
Some time in the afternoon I remembered that I had promised to bring Rick’s almost-new baseball glove to Timothy. I went into my son’s room, walked directly to the closet without looking left or right and pushed open the sliding doors. The glove was resting on a shelf I had built low enough so that Rick could store some of his more prized possessions at a level he could reach instead of stashing everything under his bed and dresser. Beneath the glove were boxes of Chinese checkers, dominoes, Trivial Pursuit Jr. Edition and Lego. Alongside were brightly colored Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joe action figures mingling with missile launchers, helicopters and Pizza Throwers, all surrounding a towering brown cylinder filled with Tinkertoy parts. Then there were the three cardboard shoe boxes filled with baseball cards. I lifted one off the shelf and held it lovingly in my hand. How many hours had Rick sat at our kitchen table, carefully transferring cards from one indexed box to anotheras he continued to invest most of his allowance in his collection? I reached in and randomly pulled out a card: “NOLAN RYAN, Texas Rangers.” One of Rick’s favorite players. Mine too.
Timothy was waiting for me, pacing back and forth in the parking lot, when I arrived at exactly three-thirty as promised. He came racing over to my car, and as I stepped out, I flipped him the glove.
“Oh … wow … this is cool!” he exclaimed as he slid his tiny left hand into the leather finger slots. Then he pounded his clenched right fist, again and again, into the darker oiled palm of the glove as he flexed the heavy leather webbing that was between thumb and forefinger.
“Want to give it a tryout?” I asked.
“Okay!”
Bill West had all the team supplies and equipment in his car, but I had remembered to bring a baseball and my old glove. The two of us played catch in right field
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