Spring From the Eyes and Nose of a Puppy

I turned 60 this January and aside from the few minutes it takes to get out of bed to feel fully functional each morning, I consider myself healthy. However, with the shutdown/lockdown that we continue to face, I find myself feeling a bit less healthy. I want to rip off my mask; I want to jump on the direct flight from Raleigh-Durham to Vegas like Carl and I used to (without masks); I want to go back to church and stand with the congregation and sing----even if my voice is off-key. I want to have friends in my home and make dinners with pasta and lots of cheese.

I stop from my whining because someone is at my knee. It's my seven-month-old puppy, Bella, who has brought a squirrel toy to me and wants me to play. I take the toy and toss it across the hardwood. She chases after it, stops, grabs it with her mouth, and races back to me. We go outside into the sunshine where I toss a tennis ball and she follows its path along the driveway, picks it up, and returns to me. She drops the ball and jumps into a pile of raked leaves we keep for her to play in (yes, it's spring and yes, we still have fallen leaves from the 40+ trees on our property). She looks at me with her beautiful expressive face and then makes a bed inside the pile.

When the first iris bloomed---the first iris Bella had even seen----she introduced herself to it. She was curious and cautious. Her approach to the iris made me think about trying new things, about wonder, about curiosity. I felt that perhaps in a season of dismal (not only the continuing pandemic but the excessive government spending, our southern border crisis, etc. and etc.) it was time to take a break from the daily news and see the world through the eyes of a puppy.

I walk around the yard and take photos of the flowers, and then take a few of one of our neighbor's trees with the large pink blooms. I breathe in the fresh warm air and note the blue in the sky. Bella skips over to me and I watch her nose sniff scents that I cannot smell. "It’s been estimated that dogs can smell anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 times better than people," writes Lynn Buzhardt, DVM. "Dogs also have a great homing instinct that depends on their ability to smell. Since dogs move their nostrils independently, they can determine the direction of an odor and use their sense of smell like a compass."

I sit on the back stoop with Bella, together--she with her compass-nose twitching in the air, and me with my camera----focused on the magnitude of creation supplied by our Creator. All of this new life for us to take in. Every year I have enjoyed the season through color, touch, smell, and that sense that causes me to say: With so much beauty, how can life not be good?

As Bella snifs my hand and rests against me, my prayer is: Don't let me be so bogged down by the way things are (things that I cannot control) that I miss the wonder and beauty of my 60th spring.

Adversity, Lilies, and Why We Don't Give Up

My son gave me bulbs for Mother's Day. I asked for them; it's nice when kids listen to their mamas.

I'm not sure why a woman with no ability to cultivate growing things other than perhaps, children and pets, would ask for flowers. Of course I love flowers and the way they make me feel alive and joyful. But I have never had the proverbial green thumb like my neighbors do.

In my garden, I wait each spring for the purple irises to bud. Those bulbs were planted by the previous homeowner. I don't have to do a thing and they flourish and look pretty.

Days after I received the Mother's Day bulbs-----Oriental Lilies----I planted them. I read the instructions on the back of the package that the six bulbs came in. For the region I live in, the hot and humid South, planting season was May and since it was May, I was right on target. My husband bought a set of garden tools so I didn't have to dig the holes with my bare hands. I read the instructions again, not wanting to miss something. We non-gardeners have to be careful. Eight inches deep, plant one bulb, plant the next three inches from it, and so on.

I watered. I waited. I got excited when I saw a green shoot come up. It was only a blade of grass.

Each morning I went to check on my bulbs.

And then one day something that was more sturdy than a blade of grass poked out of the mulch. It was green and thick and I was sure it was a lily's stem.

We went away on a vacation and while gone, Durham had heavy rains and even flooding. When we returned a week later, the stem of that one lily was even larger. Days later a new shoot appeared.

According the the package, the Oriental Lilies are to bloom in late summer. So for now, all I'm going to see are green stalks. But each time I water those beginnings-of-what-is-to-come, I have hope that in a few months, they will look just like the picture on the package. 

Currently I am in a position of waiting. Which is nothing new, really, I am one of those who ends up waiting on something often---from the small to the extreme: A check to arrive in the mail, a kid to change his attitude and lifestyle, a friend to be discharged from the hospital, a business to take off and make money for bread and meatloaf. This month as I water the ground where I planted the bulbs, I think about waiting a lot.

And I learn. Like the bulbs, we grow. It takes time to be all we were created to be. But slowly, we do push through and push forward. We have to fight at times not to give up on ourselves and on others.

So whatever you are waiting on today, keep waiting. Use the time to grow---whether it be in patience or some other way. If you are like me, a writer waiting to get a manuscript accepted by a publisher, be strong. Keep improving your craft, write other things (like a blog post). Try not to sink into despair, which by the way, I have done, and will most likely do again in the future. I doubt the big things in life, and the small. I have to trust that the printed instructions about how to plant the bulbs were correct, and that these bulbs are really lilies and that they will look like the beautiful lily on the cover of the pouch one day. And I also have to protect them from bugs and critters that like to feast on their leaves. Otherwise, I am wasting my time watering and waiting.

Like the life of my bulbs, set-backs will happen (flooding), perhaps all you wanted will not happen (I'm not sure the other four bulbs will make a debut), and you will grow older (but hopefully in the process, much stronger and more lovely instead of bitter or eaten by bugs). If I can learn valuable lessons about myself, God, love, and hope along the way, I will become gracious and wise.

The two stems greet me every day and if they could talk, I think they would say: Keep the faith, grow on. And don't forget to smile into the sun when you are able.


~*~*~
How do you handle the tough challenges of living? What works for you?  Feel free to leave a comment below.