We all were there

Today I went for a run in the UW Arboretum while the boys were busy making top-secret projects at preschool (they have something to do with Mother's day, but I have to wait until Sunday to know what they've made). The native plant sale filled the parking lot with cars, but I saw exactly no one on the trails. I went through the pine forest first, which is quite small, then wound my way through lower, leafier trees on a narrow path. As I climbed a mild hill I noticed purple flowers scattered along the trail and their new green leaves tickled my legs. I thought immediately of the ticks we were bombarded by on a walk up north, but didn't see any evidence of them creeping on me. The light came in just enough to touch the undergrowth and something about the scene made me think of birth, that one thing all of us have been through. But it wasn't about the birth we are anticipating. I thought of how we have all been there. Karl Barth has a chapter on how our first "neighbors" are our parents, whether we know them or not. Somehow, we share that it common with one another. We are born, and we have near neighbors, our parents.

I thought especially of Ryan, whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow, and how he was once so small, just born. I obviously didn't know him (I was another 4 months from my mother birthing me and half the country away) but I can imagine him with his mom, his dad looking amazed at him. We get grown up so fast and it is easy to forget how fragile we once were, how dependent on others we needed to be. But just for a moment I considered someone I love as an adult as the child he was, the child that is still there. All the love we're given, all the hours spent on the floor playing with us, all the meals we refused to eat but have since come to love, it is all still there, living within us.

The flowers abruptly turned back to pine needles and the trees towered to the sky as I passed into another part of the arb.