the trees made me think of it...

i was driving along one of the single-lane roads this morning and was struck by the beauty of the trees in a field. it’s not a particularly well-loved bit of land; it’s been cleared and maybe farmed, but mostly it has sat awaiting its turn to be plastered with houses like the "phase one" section of the adjacent housing estate. in the meantime, it serves as a playground for ATV riders and part of it was cut over for a power line. it’s full of bushy little trees, nearly all of the same type. i would say that there may not be any such thing as a truly ugly tree (with the possible exception of ailanthus), but this field of trees is most notable visually as an exercise in verticality. they aren’t very big, and they are all striving for the light due to how closely they are growing. yet this morning they were beautiful enough to make me pull over and look at them for a moment, because they are covered in white blossoms. imagine a whole field, as far as your eye can go, shimmering with white. later i was thinking about how i, and presumably most other people, have driven by it 5 days a week for years and never really noticed it that much. you sort of expect the loveliness of the cherry trees that are blooming now in all the landscaping you see at businesses and homes, but maybe not the transformation of this unplanted, unarranged, unplanned expanse of scrub. it made me think about other areas of life that i treasure, and that i could easily have missed out on entirely if i hadn’t been paying attention and making conscious choices about things. like the relationship i am blessed to find myself in---which i almost missed, because he didn’t align with the expectations i had. not that he is not a beautiful man, because he is. in fact, he possesses every trait and quality, physical and mental and spiritual, that i could have identified as desired by me. but he and i almost missed connecting. chalk it up to reticence, maybe; we are both too polite for our own good sometimes. he’s emphatically not one of the "hey baby" chat-up kind of guys. but i think some of the near-miss was due to both of us having filters in our minds that made us doubt whether we were "correct" in our attraction to each other. i thought that he found me too brash, too young, and annoying. he thought that i found him not brash enough, too old, and not engaging enough to hold my attention. wrong on all counts, as a few conversations and a few days and evenings together quickly made clear.

what if i had continued to steer myself using the same old cloudy judgement that made me nearly miss getting to know the person who may just be my soulmate and partner for life? what if i had let doubt keep me from giving it one more shot? what if he had done the same?

it’s a good lesson. i have to wonder how many times we let ourselves get so distracted or depressed that we miss out on some of life’s most precious things. i’ve known parents who seem so wrapped up in other stuff and so resentful of yet another claim on their time that they don’t fully acknowledge the miracles that are their children. you see them all the time in restaurants and shops; the babies stuck in those snap-out carseat carriers, crying or just gently whimpering, and utterly ignored by their own parents. in a few short years, they’ll be in school and too big to be cradled against the chest anymore. i’d rather drop food or not eat than miss the chance to cuddle my baby. and i’ve lost dear friends in car accidents---one day the people you love are there and the next day they are gone. you have to cherish them daily, because you never know what tomorrow may bring. i’ve known a woman who woke up with a headache and went to bed that night with a diagnosis of inoperable brain tumor, 3 - 6 months to live. you can bet that she didn’t regret spending less time at the office if it gave her children more moments with her to remember. today is my daughter’s birthday, and i always remember how close i came to losing her during the pregnancy, and then how close she came to losing me due to childbirth complications. so i am going to fight like hell to keep my daughter close as she grows older. i am not going to be too busy to meet a friend for lunch. i am going to love this man fiercely for whatever time we have together. and i’m going to keep looking at the beauty of the world, in places expected and unexpected.