Ralph, the Squirrel

My sweetie complains about the speed with which i eat dinner. Then he remembers going out to lunch with my father, who finished his lunch at the Chinese restaurant in 10 minutes.

"Ralph had 9 siblings," i say. "During the Great Depression. There were no second helpings." 

I never realized that i also eat fast, until my sweetie pointed it out to me. It's a habit that i haven't tried to break.

For most of my adult life, i thought i was my habits. I am a person who.... Eventually i glimpsed awareness, and for a second, saw the lack of self. Habits do not make a self, it turns out.

I lay sunflower seeds on the railing of the deck for the birds, and when I am not looking, a squirrel sneaks up on the railing and gobbles. He sees me coming. He eats faster. I open the door. He eats faster. I open the storm door, he starts to run. "Get out of here, Ralph!" i say to the squirrel who is scampering across the snow.

MY FATHER'S LEGACY

My father died 16 years ago, but today is his birthday, so I'm thinking of him. He had absolutely no

idea about flowers, but, as a farmer, he knew his grasses, something I do not know. He could identify

wheat, rye, oats, and timothy. And he knew alfalfa and the clovers that he cut for hay 3 times every

summer.

His idea of gardening was to plow up a quarter-acre with a small Massey-Ferguson tractor, then put

us kids to work with hoes while he went to jog his harness horses. He himself was not much of a

gardener, having plowed too many fields barefoot with horses during the Great Depression. He liked

to move earth with equipment of any sort.

He did like to grow tomatoes and cucumbers though. That was his idea of a garden, out behind the

horse barn, fertilized with horse manure, and growing plenty of weeds.

Three of his four kids (including me) got the gardening gene. The other one got the mechanical gene.

My father is gone now, but the fruit of his actions lives on. Three of us will be starting tomato

seedlings sometime soon.

My Father's Legacy

My father died 16 years ago, but today is his birthday, so i'm thinking of him. He had absolutely no idea about flowers, but, as a farmer, he knew his grasses, something i do not know. He could identify wheat, rye, oats, and timothy. And he knew alfalfa and the clovers that he cut for hay 3 times every summer.

His idea of gardening was to plow up a quarter-acre with a small Massey-Ferguson tractor, then put us kids to work with hoes while he went to jog his harness horses. He himself was not much of a gardener, having plowed too many fields barefoot with horses during the Great Depression. He liked to move earth with equipment of any sort.

He did like to grow tomatoes and cucumbers though. That was his idea of a garden, out behind the horse barn, fertilized with horse manure, and growing plenty of weeds.

Three of his four kids (including me) got the gardening gene. The other one got the mechanical gene.

My father is gone now, but the fruit of his actions lives on. Three of us will be starting tomato seedlings sometime soon.

Garden Bench Memorial

My dad died 16 years ago today, and there's a garden bench with his name on it in the tiny park in downtown Westfield, Indiana.

I don't think of my father as civic-minded exactly, yet there's that bench that he "bought" a couple of years before he died, when the town mothers were raising money for this then-new little downtown park. He was having coffee with his cronies at McDonald's, when someone approached him, and the men outbid each other in that friendly, small-town way.

I like to sit on that bench with my father's name on it during my annual visits to my brother nearby. I sit and remember my father and the way the town used to look. Everything has changed now. The name of the town remains the same, but it looks very different. The names of the streets remain the same, but Main Street and Union Street have been totally redesigned.

Change. Nothing stands still.