Life Is A Surprise

This little purple alyssum in a pot in my backyard wanted nothing to do with blooming this summer when all the other flowers were taking their turns. I would water it when I watered all the others, because we had a very dry summer here at the coast, and look at it mournfully when it refused to bloom. Finally it made a few haphazard pale flowers that were a shadow of what it once was. I gave up on seeing it the way I had loved it.

Then the end of October came and with it rain and storms. For a while the coast was drenched in wet weather. And the other day, when I was picking up Cotton’s business after our morning jog, I stopped dead in my tracks to see it all abloom, a week or so before Thanksgiving, when all the other flowers had long exhausted themselves, alight with these deep purple flowers. I can’t think of a time in my life with gardens that I’d ever seen such a thing. It really expressed a love song in flowers even at this late hour, to the long awaited rain. I love when life surprises me this way.

And that’s not all. This summer, when I was watching for the deer, another surprise was unfolding that I had to keep private at the time. Now I find, when I finally have the go ahead to do so, that it’s hard to find the words, or even the will to describe it in detail. So I will hope a picture substitutes for a thousand words:

“Ultrasound,” chalk pastel by Maria Theresa Maggi

This is my biological grandson in utero at 20 weeks. As my daughter-in-law so aptly put it when she posted the original ultrasound on Instagram, after a long long silence: “It’s been a long journey getting to this point, Baby boy Theo will be arriving March 2023!”

Out of respect for their privacy, I will let that stand, but add it’s nothing short of a miracle. So please share my joy as I anticipate the arrival of our newest family member, who is indeed, as my cousin said, “a miracle baby.” I’ll also note I deeply felt the spirit of my foster grandbaby play a generous role in encouraging Theo’s spirit to come forward to incarnate. Things don’t work out the way we wish they would sometimes, but it’s also true that they work out in even more grand and glorious ways than we can ever imagine.

My foster grandbaby will always be, as my son so perfectly put it, “our first.” And we are ever grateful for our time with them We miss them still, and every day pray they are safe and well loved up close and personal. And now we prepare for the next biological generation to make his appearance. As my son so sweetly told me when they had chosen the name, without a trace of his usual fall back on sarcasm or snark, “Mom,Theo means ‘beloved by God’.” How perfect. And by us, too, forever and ever.