The normal course of the year brings many changes in the natural world around us. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Bob Hamma reflects on how attention to the rhythm of natural changes can open new perspectives for us:
Transcript
The normal course of the year brings many changes in the natural world around us. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Bob Hamma reflects on how attention to the rhythm of natural changes can open new perspectives for us:
Almost ten years ago, when my family first moved into our house, there was a dying tree in the yard. Tall and slender, the tree was precariously close to the house, and on the
windward side. One day a stranger in overalls carrying a chain saw knocked at the door. He had noticed the tree and offered to cut it down. We agreed on a price and the tree was soon felled, leaving only the stump, about eighteen inches high.
When spring came, my daughter Sarah was born. That summer some potted impatiens bloomed on the stump. Then we put a squirrel feeder on it. As Sarah grew she would play on it, sometimes sitting, sometimes jumping off it. But as the years passed, she took no particular interest in it. I alone was watching.
As I cleaned up in the yard recently I noticed the stump was falling apart. When I laid my hand on it, it crumbled. A few light swings of the ax and it was gone. In April, Sarah
turned ten, full of energy, laughter, and promise. “Nothing gold can stay,” Robert Frost once wrote about the birch leaves in spring. But leaves have many colors in their brief lives and all are beautiful. The stump was pleasing as it made its way to dust, counting the years of Sarah’s childhood. And Sarah is always a new and surprising gift as she grows each day.
Some say change is good, some say not. But since there is no choice about it I choose to embrace change. If I resist, I will miss the new opportunities it offers and drain myself
fighting it. Though accepting it is sometimes painful, in the midst of the change I find glimpses of hope.
A few yards from where the stump once stood is a dogwood that I planted the year Sarah was born. This year it finally bloomed.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bob Hamma.
Host Tag: Bob Hamma is an author and writer who lives in South Bend, Indiana. He comes to us by way of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.