SNAPSHOTS: Some thoughts on thankfulness

‘As I pull and sweep the leaves across my yard, I can hear my grandfather’s raspy, wrecked voice release inside my head. It tells me that beauty and raising children require effort and sacrifice — and time.

By Dennis O’Neill Special Writer
    I can see by my watch — without taking my hand from the rake — that this is going to take all day. It’s not that I lack help. My maintenance crew is 6- and 7-years old respectively. But they can take any ordinary five- minute task — like folding towels from the dryer — and turn it into an hour-long marathon. Fortunately, there is more at stake here than just raking leaves. We are spending “quality” time together. (Spell that “q-u-a-n-t-i-t- y” for all the drink and bathroom breaks, and the times I have to put my rake down to respond to an urgent, “Daddy, Daddy, come look at this!”
    I never raked leaves with my parents. We always lived in apartment complexes that had no grass to cut in summer or leaves to rake in late fall. However, I remember raking leaves at my grandfather’s house on a brisk mid-November morning. I was 8 years old.
    My grandfather’s caustically nosy neighbor interrupted our work by shouting over the fence- line.
    “I told you to cut those trees down,” he gloated, full of self- importance. “While you’re busting your hump chasing leaves, I’ll be inside with my feet up and watching TV.”
    That sounded like a good argument to an 8-year-old boy who was quickly developing blisters on his hands. But, before I could run to the garage and exchange my rake for the chainsaw, my grandfather — a taciturn fisherman with a love for both the sea and his garden — put a hand on my shoulder. I knew his rebuttal was imminent – and meant only for me.
    “If you want shade in summer,” he said in a raspy, wrecked voice that he rarely used, “then you rake leaves in the fall.”
    TV still sounded good to me at the time, but I kept my rake, worked by his side, and waited for understanding.
    My grandfather was not a Buddhist monk. He was a Lutheran fisherman who wielded the simple wisdom of his experience as deftly and economically as he did a fishing rod. His koan-like, “Trojan Horse” teachings often slipped inside of my memory, waiting for the proper time to unleash their insight.
    As I pull and sweep the leaves across my yard, I can hear his raspy, wrecked voice release inside my head. It tells me that beauty and raising children require effort and sacrifice —– and time.
    I’m no biologist, but I passed the subject in high school. I have a rudimentary understanding of why the leaves of autumn change color and fall to the ground. But explanations involving chlorophyll, hibernation and gravity are not what my children want to hear. They want to run and jump in crunchy piles of auburn-gold and reddish-brown, then dance with swirling, colored leaves blown by playful gusts of wind.
    I read once that this is the time of year that trees withdraw life from their leaves. It is withdrawn to safeguard it against the harshness of winter. Toxins collected during the growth cycle are left behind and released with each falling leaf. Moreover, as they decompose back into the earth, they help provide the nutrients for new life in the spring.
    I hear my grandfather’s voice again as I watch this autumn waltz of wind, leaves, and laughing children unfold before me.
    “Don’t let remorse and regret consume your life,” he tells me. “Learn from the trees; learn from your children. Withdraw life from the toxins and bulldog- sins that clutch at your days and let them fall like so many leaves. And then join your children in a dance of celebration and thanksgiving.”
    A trio of tom turkeys emerges from the brush-line that borders our yard from the wooded acres behind. We watch quietly for a moment as they take turns puffing themselves up into those self-important poses I remember stapled onto the Thanksgiving bulletin boards at school when I was a kid.
    The three gobblers yodel a time or two before my children explode from their stillness and chase them back into the woods. “Run for your lives!” they shout after them. (They yell this same thing in grocery stores when they pass the lobster tank.) “Run for your lives!” they shout one last time, “Thanksgiving’s coming!”
    “The (real) cycle you’re working on is a cycle called ‘yourself,’” wrote Robert M. Pirsig in his famous book, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” And I realize that the real purpose of my raking leaves today is to clear space for thankfulness in my life.
    “Run for your life! Thanksgiving’s coming!” It’s a warning for turkeys to flee the Thanksgiving table. It’s also a summons for me to find it, to sit with family and friends, and to thank God for all that I have received.
    I can see by my watch that this is going to take me all day. I can’t think of a better way to spend my time. It’s going to be a great Thanksgiving. You can sort of tell these things.
Dennis M. O’Neill is pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Hopewell. He has written many freelance pieces for The Princeton Packet.