Pictured: the view from my grandparents' and now my sister Jennie's home taken May 29, 2011.We saw "The Tree of Life" last night in San Francisco. It was a mindbender. I think I need to see it again and again. In order to fully appreciate and see the artistry of the filmmaker, I need to see again the images and listen to the whisperings and the music and the very minimal dialogue. I had a personal experience of "the tree of life". Pete and I were walking through Muir Woods a year ago or so. There was a light mist..we were wearing our raincoats. Along the wooden path we stopped to admire a circle of redwoods to our right just off the trail. The trees in the middle were the lowly remnants of once "parent" trees. Around them soared the offspring of these trees. It hit me in a flash that we, Pete and I , are like those trees in the middle, who started something with our children. We will diminish as they grow tall and strong. We will die and they will flourish and the cycle will continue. In that moment, I received this as a gift.. that while sometimes I am bereft at
"losing" the boys, the truth is much bigger than that.. that I am a part of a living story that will continue and that we have done our parts and that we remain fixed in that ground together as parents of our children... nothing will change that. When Tommy was born one miracle that struck me then was that this newborn would be OURS forever. He was OURS. to love and to cherish. I was cemented (planted) now in time forever. and the tree of life continues to grow.
4 comments:
Pretty picture! I'm always glad to share the view, come anytime.
I like your thoughts on being a tree. It's kind of like A Wind at the Door by Madeline L'Engle (I think that's the right title) in which the baby mitochondria had to plant themselves to join the song of the universe.
thanks for that Jennie! I'm looking for summer reading.. it's Madeline L'Engle! Do you have a favorite of hers? Am reading "Every Last One" by Anna Quindlan right now.. jury's still out.
Anna Quindlen goes around killing off the main character's children and I just can't read that and call it enjoyment with my baby birds still in the nest. (which probably explains why I read so much chick-lit--the iceberg lettuce of the literary world:it doesn't harm the digestion) Anyway, let me know what you think of Every Last One because I have that sitting around here, unread. You have to read the Madeline L'Engle books in order unless you've read them before: A Wrinkle in Time (Meg learns the most important gift from God is not the ability to hate), A Wind at the Door (even the smallest beings can screw things up if they rail against the universe), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (the most sci-fi of the books and I think the lesson is that evil is genetic?), Many Waters (awesome Noah's Ark story), and An Acceptable Time (was written long after the others and has a purity message). You can read them pretty fast--they are written for young teens. But I get more out of them now than I did then.
Now how come I'm signed in as Becky? that last comment was from me--Jennie
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