We pass through it now. Going to the chickens or the goats. Or the bright yellow shed. It’s the back entrance to our garden, a nod to time. Almost like the magic wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. We walk through always getting older and somehow staying put. Immersed in life, but the poetry of it lies in minutes and seconds and short naptimes, long Sunday afternoons, glimpses of warm sunshine in winter, dreaming of our home and garden in the future, loving where we are now.
The frame of our garden entrance, draped in twinkly lights, used to be part of our son’s tiny nursery. Our blue house was once one bedroom/one bath, so we surrounded his playpen with soft green flowy curtains hung on 3 frames made from tree branches around our home. It was a little woodsy canopy/tent like creation. We strung bright colorful pom-poms above and these crafted by our son’s grandma. We hung her handmade quilt as backdrop. It was really enchanting. Our house grew and so did our family. We replaced that tiny “nursery” with a kid’s room, and eventually part of that woodsy newborn season became our back garden entrance.
Time.
I hear the birds chirping today. Spring will come soon and not soon enough and too fast until it’s already Christmastime. That back garden entrance will be a little more weathered and maybe we will be a little more wise. Whatever the case we will have added laughter to the life story. Maybe Shasta will still be pouring me “tea” and calling it coffee when I ask what flavor of tea it is. (Good man.) Maybe Heidi will start filling up colorful tea cups with sand, too. How will the roses fare? And how will I? I’m growing so much.
I often look at that back garden entrance and feel a deep smile. How could I not? Maybe it’s the rocking chair in the kid’s room painted with flowers and a flowing “Grow,” that reminds me it is good for time to pass and a gift to watch babies grow and God’s grace that I do, too. Bright yellow boots to the bright yellow shed beneath the C.S. Lewis wardrobe masquerading as a garden gate entrance that used to be a newborn season.
It is good for time to pass. It is good to grow.
That’s how stories go.
And this has been the sweetest kind.
Sierra V. Fedorko 