Growth

This is my Grandma Brady's house, back when Grandpa had just finished building it. They had been living in the basement for several years, along with all their children, so this was quite a step up in the world - literally.

I loved this house. There were huge trees in the back yard when I was little. I would spread my coloring books on the cool grass and lie on my tummy for hours while I created outside-the-lines masterpieces to show my mom and dad. This house is gone now. The community outgrew it.

I saw the house that I was little in. It looked little. The bank of flowers by the side yard was tiny. I thought for sure that the owners had reduced it. I knocked on the door, told the young man who lived there that I had been a child in that house and asked if he would he mind if I looked at the back yard. He was very gracious. "No go ahead and look around." He smiled. He probably thought I was way too old to have ever been a child.

I needed to see that back yard. That was the yard in which my father had built "the biggest swing set in the world!" It had a swing that was the swing of all swings! I could see clear across the valley when I was swinging really high. I could see clear across the valley to the other mountains. The ones where the sun went to bed at night. I had to see that yard!.

I pressed the gate gingerly and it slowly opened. And then I saw it. A perfectly ordinary suburban back yard. No swing set. No teeter totter. No way to see clear across the valley. Just a tiny patio and some lawn. How could I have been so wrong?

I went back out to the side yard and looked at the flower bank. That huge flower bank that I was never allowed to climb and did any way. I knelt down on the grass and watched as the flower bank grew before my very eyes. The lower I got, the taller it got. I had grown. Grown all the way up. Grown up. And of course, I knew that a grown up could not see what a child could see. At least, not in the same way.

Growth gives us some things, and robs us of others. A growing love can bring all sorts of joys and heartaches into our lives. A growing waistline can destroy our health. I've always seemed to have a love/hate relationship with growth. I'd sing Peter Pan's ode to youth, "I WON'T grow up!" while I was longing to be one of the "big kids."

This picture of my mom and dad - before they were a mom and dad - was taken at Grandma Brady's house many years after the first picture.  You can see the tree behind them has grown up quite nicely.  In the first picture, it hadn't even been planted.  I loved climbing the tree - I had a whole new perspective on things!

I'm still growing. Still gaining new perspective on things. At least I think I am. I can't really tell because growth is silent now. Now I hold on to the views that I love - because I know that before long I think I might see something differently, and I want to add to my perspective, not take something away. Maybe tomorrow I'll look at my back yard a little differently. Or better yet, maybe I'll plant a tree. Then, maybe someday, another little girl will lie under it on the cool green grass and color outside of the lines...