Through the Window
Here is a girl who presses upward to the sky while climbing a tree to hang shiny ornaments. I watch through the window.
She came to our house on Christmas Day, so she’d not been here for the hanging of the greens. Now she makes up for that loss.
She is a woodpecker climbing. She is a tiny prayer on the chin of a cloud.
I smile as she reaches farther up the tree. Her dad stays watchful and hands ornaments up to her.
My, my, my. You’d love this girl just for her determinism and bravery.
Listening to suggestions, she ties three small ornaments to the fingers of a limb, then she and her dad slingshot them upward. She knows something about wings. I laugh at the liveliness.
My, my, my. Where did my tears come from?
Tears don’t always make a lot of sense, do they? Especially around Christmas time.
I have often eavesdropped on the whispers of this tree’s heart-shaped leaves and watched birds sitting on its slender limbs. What’s happening now is quite different.
A different kind of music. No hesitation from this small girl hanging ornaments.
She is about the business of transforming an unnoticed winter tree into a tree of joy.
My dear girl, I give you a grandmother’s blessing. You keep on climbing. Climb the mountains, the trees. Climb the skies and all the adventures waiting out there for you.
I can’t prepare the world for you, but you make me beam. And I know I can’t help you climb your mountains and trees ahead, but I can pray you keep reaching for the next limb, that you keep adding shine and joy to whatever you touch.
Oh, my friends, this is what we must strive for!
I see the girl in the tree gaze down at her father. A father, handing up an ornament to his daughter.
God’s wonder to each of you. May you find it and embrace it.
Pat Durmon
(patdurmon.com)
P.S. As always, I thank you for your thoughts and shares. You are part of the goodness I enjoy. Below the image are links to my books at Amazon. All purchases are appreciated!
Hanging ornaments outside. Photographed by Pat Durmon, December 27, 2019.
