Last Friday the third graders in Ms. Dol’s class got to create some Spring of their own. The weather service was predicting up to 9 inches of snow for the coming weekend. It was certain to be a wintery mix and mess. It was March 21, officially Spring and so rather than wait for warmth, they created their own.
Ms. Dols turned them loose. She had boxes of construction paper, coffee filters, water color paints, beads, pipe cleaners, tape, scissors, markers and massive amounts of glue. She didn’t tell them what to make other than Springtime and it worked. It was theirs to define, to create and it too was a mess. But it worked.
There was beauty where there hadn’t been before. They made flowers and bees, butterflies and dragonflies. It was a good reminder to me that even in times of chaos, we too can participate in the creation of beauty.
As I thought of the kids and their creation of flowers, I was reminded of a quote by E. B. White. White, author of Charlotte’s Web and so many other books and articles, wrote this in an essay about his wife’s planting of bulbs in her garden for the last time:
As the years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion — the small, hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.
As I thought of Katherine White calmly plotting the resurrection in her garden, I was reminded of another woman who planted so much beauty in her own backyard. I just recently learned that Lorraine had died. Lorraine was a faithful member of the church I had served for 30 years. Janell, a friend and the former office coordinator, called to let me know that Lorraine, who was 94, had died quietly of a stroke. Janell said that just days before her death, Lorraine had been outside shoveling the slush away from her gardens.
Lorraine’s gardens were exquisite. They were filled with so much color- pinks, purples, yellows and oranges. And there were all different kinds of flowers and ferns. The many plots were carefully tended just as she tended to those who she cared about.
Back when I was her pastor, she would invite Janell and I to lunch several times each Summer. We would eat on her good dishes in the back yard. The meal would be carefully prepared, a hot dish of some sort. And dessert was a sweet with mountains of Kool Whip. I knew to schedule at least two hours for these lunches for it was something to linger over.
Lorraine tended so many people. She worked as part of the catering service at our local convention center, often overseeing all the servers for events and weddings. She did this into her 70’s. I kept asking how she could carry all those heavy trays of food. She would just wave me off.
Her greatest act of love perhaps was the care she gave her husband Howard. She kept him home as he was dying. She turned their dining room into his hospice room. She was always tending to him. At times I would bring her lunch and sit quietly with her.
She never really needed the food I brought, but it was a good excuse to visit. Her fridge was always filled with home cooked food. I remember that the outside of it was covered with magnets. Magnets held pictures of her family. And there were magnets that had sayings like: “life is tough, but so are you”, “ Believe in Yourself”, “Never Stop Dreaming”. Janell reminded me that when you called Lorraine’s answering machine it always ended with, “Remember to be Kind.”
So, in these days of chaos and confusion I will try to remember to be kind. I will get messy with the kids. And I will try to calmly plot the resurrection with others doing the same. Maybe it does all start in a garden.
