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The reflection in the pond mirrored the trees standing tall above the meadow but the reflection looked more like the hand strokes of a master painter than those that God created that stood above its banks. The grass waved back and forth in the reflection like cheering crowds waving their arms in silent revelry.
The man sat in awe of it all. He seemed more a part of a painting than the world around him. The birds chatted at the shadow of a man. Silent and unmoving but his eyes--he took in the beauty that God had afforded him. His mind fluttered with the birds that hopped from frond to frond and he heard the whisper of a breeze as it moved through the fronds, making the birds seem to dance side by side to its melody.
He took in the scene in front of him like a masterful play he’d never seen before. He saw a bird flutter to her nest and thought of his own children. In the reflection he saw his life moving slowly and wondered where it had gone.
His children were grown. He saw them in the reflection of the water when they were young and had needed him. He had imparted on them the knowledge he had to share. Now he felt inconsequential as he sat on the bank with the trees looking down on him and the masterpiece floating in front of him.
His hands moved as he picked up a pad of paper that lay by his chair. The birds chirped in annoyance at his disturbance of their peace with his movement. A flicker of a smile crossed his face.
He wanted to write about his life and the memories that floated before him—about growing up poor without knowing it, about raising children, about dreams, as the one he sat on its bank. He’d dreamed of a small lake, but with little money, he’d hired a friend with no job, and he’d watched his dream grow. The lake had been a tiny pool in a meadow fed by a spring, “the little pond”. Its banks now spread out before him farther than he would care to swim even in his younger years.
He laid the pad on his lap, but before the words were written, he saw the swirls in the water and watched the feeding fish. He smiled as he thought of his children proudly bringing in buckets of fish they’d caught to fill the little pond which still had no other name though it had outgrown it long ago. His children too had outgrown their banks and moved away, though not far, they had all come back to their home, the home he had built with sweat and tears and love.
His youngest daughter, the last to return home, was like him in many ways, but her mother’s child too and had gathered twigs from both lives and built a home where she would flutter in and talk, and listen and watch the waters with him. She too was amazed at the water color painting that floated in front of them in the twilight of the evening.
They watched the world float by and they talked about life.
He told her how he wanted to put the words down, but they didn’t flow from him like the words when he spoke. She saw his empty pad. She listened as he talked and wrote down the words for him.
She wondered at this man who was her father. She had not really known him when she was a child, but somehow had grown up with so much of him in her. She treasured the sunset with him in the peaceful world of the little pond.
She wanted to take a picture she could keep forever, but she was a writer, so she put it down so she could read it later and see it as she saw it now. He told her how lives were fleeting in this world so she painted the picture in words and prayed for many more sunsets and masterful paintings. She prayed for time to find out more about this man who spoke to her now as a friend and not a child. She wanted to tell him how she needed him now more than ever. That life was full circle, and that the time they shared was the greatest gift. She wrote it down for them both in hopes it would last forever
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