Ready

This tiny little cantaloupe - small enough to fit in the palms of my hands - came out of Mom's garden. It had the color and the ridges of a full grown cantaloupe. It smelled delicious when we cut into it. We didn't know if it was really ripe yet, but we decided to try it.

It tasted...just like a cantaloupe! I thought about the plant it came from with its vine climbing up some chicken wire. I asked Mom how she knew this tiny cantaloupe was ready.


"Because it was on the ground. It had already come off the vine when I went out to the garden."

Which reminded me what I had begun to write while "housesitting" for my parents. Due to the headaches that started around then, there were a couple posts during that time that didn't get finished. But I had a lot to think about.

Like tomatoes. And how they come off the vine easily - but only when they're ready.

And how you can't rush a good, deep watering. The best way to cheat evaporation in this bone dry climate is to water trees and bushes and vegetables slowly, with water coming out of a hose at just above a drip for sometimes hours at a time.


While I picked tomatoes and fed chickens and watered plants, I also thought about life. The reason my parents were out of town was for the interment of my Grandma's cremated remains in her home state of Colorado. Even though Grandma always opened her heart to us, there was a lot of her heart that she never opened up about. (Wonder where I get that from.) What did she really think about death? And dying? In her final hours, what did she see ahead?

While I was watering plants in Arizona and my parents were at a funeral in Colorado, my good friend J. was sitting in a hospital in California, next to the bed of her father. He was (and still is) slowly recovering from his third (or fourth?) major stroke but had never wanted to talk with anyone much about dying or life after death. And then that Saturday, he talked with his daughter about death, about heaven, about hope in Christ. So many people have prayed for this man for so long. For the first time, dad and daughter prayed together. I guess he was ready.


****

Photos by me.

Edited to add: The hand in the second cantaloupe photo is my brother's. I said "E, put your hand in for scale..." and that is what he did.