than I did in the last 10-11 years. I regret that, but I have accepted that My choices had a value of their own ... it is what it is.
At any rate, I was walking to my car the other morning on my way to my first patient and notice this and a few other flowers like it sprinkled singularly around the area outside one other apartment.
Such a simple, fragile and sweet flower yet, so full of life and energy. It was so refreshing! Mostly, I suppose, because it reminded me of this wonderful day I spent about 15-20 years ago with my Dad. I really can't remember if it was before Mother died or after ...
We went fishing, just he and I. And to the best of my memory, I think we were in South Alabama, in Sumter County back where he had hunting property across the Black Warrior River from Demo-polis, Alabama. The property was up the hill from the back waters of that river. The Black Warrior is not the same as the The Warrior River that he ended up living the rest of his life on, bu they are both huge rivers and play big parts in the system of rivers in Alabama that actually feed into the Mississippi at some point. ... Lots of commerce has, and still does, move down those waters in our State.
The fishing, itself, in my memory was unremarkable. I don't think I was, or even had started, fly fishing because those waters are so full of water cedars either in stumps that we had to idle through so as not to insidiously loose a prop, or in tall bunches of trees through out. No way to cast a fly through all of that ... at least I certainly couldn't have at that early stage of my casting career!
Dad was probably trolling through trying to spinner cast for crappy, bream, or bass. I was probably spending my time untangling line from the spinner reel. To be dreadfully and embarrassingly honest, I did not really love fishing back then.
My father and I were definitely 'cut from the same cloth'. We, when we were both younger, were Way too much alike. He wanted me to do things they way he did and I didn't want to do Anything like Anyone did .... well, we both mellowed over the years ... but he beat me in that aspect ... I am still more stubborn and unique for a lot of people's good!!!
So, I didn't fish well, because I didn't take his teaching and advice very well and I therefore I hated it .... because I didn't do it right. It wasn't until I learned to fly fish, that I came to love fishing and am applying that love and learning to other manners of fishing today.
So, to make a very short story, even longer (to take the words from my Grandaddy Shepard...), I don't remember anything else from that day, except the flowers ...
... and a tiny island of those flower .... an island that my dad and I seemed to find and share in a moment of quiet magic. A miracle that was gifted to us, and seemingly, us alone.
He was casting, I was probably untangling .... and I hear him say: "I've seen these little flowers before, just one or two here and there ... but nothing like this. Look, Jacqueline." I looked up and behind me and see that he had trolled the boat up to this tiny little island ... 1/2 of an acre at most? ... heavily covered in a canopy of cedars, pines, oaks and a breath-taking carpet of this singular white, delicate flowers .... just like the pink one, pictured here.
............................................... .. .... .. .
They are quiet, voluminously quiet ......
Breathtakingly beautiful ...............
And it was something that felt like only my Poppa and I shared, with God ...
And if you were wondering? That is why I continued to go fishing with my father .... because in someway or another, we were a party to Miracles.
He was alive due to miracles, I was a small miracle, his marriage and love affair was a miracle ....
I believe in miracles .... God has blessed me with so many .... My biggest desire? Is to show you that they are Real ...
(c)2011jsblankenship
