Sunday Morning Meds--Planted

“. . .like a tree planted by streams of water. . .Psalm 1:3

Once upon a time, my father received a job offer from an association of Christian schools in another state. I don’t remember the offer myself--I was far too young--but I know my father’s character well enough to be able to imagine how thrilled he must have been because to him, working for Christian education would have been like being in the direct employ of the Lord Almighty.

At the time, I know he thought he wasn’t. He was doing some accounting work for a heavy-equipment industry run by a bunch of yahoos who liked to wheel-and-deal and party far better than my father did, the preacher’s kid.

Armed with that blessed new job offer, he must have gone the rounds. I’m not sure what my mother said when he told her. I should have asked her, I guess. But I know what happened when he spoke to my grandfather, his father-in-law. Grandpa cried. My father told me that, years later.

My father didn’t lament those tears. When he told me that story, he didn’t raise a fist and declare that, right then and there, it was Grandpa’s fault he couldn’t take that great job. But the story he told had lines I didn’t have to draw in.

Grandpa cried because he didn’t want his daughter to move so far from home, a new house he and Grandma had built just a block away from the heart of the village where stood his blacksmith shop/gas station. Grandpa cried because he didn’t want his grandchildren gone. Grandpa, the blacksmith, bawled, and Dad hung in for a few more years with roisters.

There’s always more to the story, and this one has some significant antecedent action. Grandpa’s only other daughter was killed in freakish car accident not that many years before. Grandpa—and Grandma—had already suffered just the death of a child; they didn’t want to lose another, even if its agent was only distance.

I’m told that my grandfather’s emotions were legendarily promiscuous. But I’ll excuse the tears this time because I never lost a child and he did. If he bawled when my father asked about his taking a job that my father might have believed came directly from the council of the Lord, I’ll forgive Grandpa and those tears.

Most all fiction begins in the mind of the writer with a single question: “what if”? The “what if?” of this little family story may be obvious. If my aunt hadn’t been killed and my Grandpa would not have cried, would my father have left the state and taken the job of his dreams? And even more to the point—if all of this had happened, who would I be, having grown up in a whole different world? And now, all these years later, who on earth would I be?

It’s of more than passing interest to me that the tree of Psalm 1 is “planted.” Someone put it down on the banks of that metaphorical river. The particular spot wasn’t necessarily the choice of the whirly-gig maple seed; that spot was chosen.

When I think of old blacksmith’s tears, it’s almost impossible not to believe that we are not our own. There must be a design to this madness. Someone’s in control. Someone, or so it seems to me, does the planting. 

 I’m a witness.