Late entry... Stopping to smell the Kudzu

Kudzu is often considered a plague and an unwanted guest. However, at the right time of year, the air is fragrant with it's perfume, and when picked, the blossoms produce a beautiful sweet jelly that is delightful to the taste. My students were amazed when I picked the blossoms, boiled the flowers and they helped to make the jelly.

I know someone who's life has been more than a little rough lately and I thought of him when I made the jelly. His father died about ten days ago and the first of his niece's killers was sentenced on Monday, his father's funeral was Tuesday. So on Thursday I stopped by to give him a little gift. What he didn't know was that his gift to me was far larger.

This person is someone I know professionally and every time I meet with him he unfailingly tells me how good I am as a Social Studies teacher. Sometimes I forget that I am really passionate about teaching about our country. Talking with him renews my passion for what I really do love and makes me remember that I am a good teacher.

As I talked with him about my sympathy for his loss, we talked about his father and his father's legacy. I thought about my own father so recently gone and what he had left to me. He told me about his father and the kind of person he was and I shared how my step-sister had said that my own father was so very like a peach, already sweet before being squeezed and was always sweet no matter what life threw his way. We shared our faith and the sense of loss. For the first time I was able to really grieve for my father. As we talked I was grateful that he had such a close and supportive family and that as his father passed that there were those who loved him holding his hands. I wondered if anyone held my father's hand because I was not allowed to be there to do so myself.

As we talked about his niece I shared how much my heart broke at his brother's grief and loss. I shared how much I prayed for their comfort as I watched this father confront his daughter's killer with such obvious pain and dignity in the courtroom. We shared our feelings as parents and how we would willingly give our lives for our children and again we shared our faith. I was impressed still more by the love of his family for one another and shared with him how grateful I was that in his time of trial that he had a wonderful and loving spouse to support him.

We talked for a while and on the way home I saw God's hand in all around me more clearly than I had recently. The clouds seemed more brilliant, the leaves more shades of green, the sky more blue, and somewhere, perhaps only in my imagination, I smelled the Kudzu blossoms.