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16 But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city. Hebrews 11:16 KJV
Homeward
I had taken pen in hand at sixteen when I had first truly noticed the call of the Canada geese winging their skyward way south for winter. It inspired me then to pour out my soul, to think about this ordered world I lived in, to grow pensive, to become myself.
They called again, just now, as they have each year, and once again, I dropped what I was doing in my tiny kitchen and flew out the door, though slower than that first year, sadder at their going, more nostalgic with each flight.
My Child’s First Year
I had seen them go the year my baby daughter first watched with me. Year by year, child by child, we watched the geese make their journey. By the time my sixth child was born, we were well accustomed to dashing from the house at first sound of their yearly pilgrimage.
And the years passed overhead, as did the geese.
Swiftly, following the seasons, the children grew, and following some inward call, they too, each took to their individual pilgrimage of growth, and left.
Alone
It is the first year I am alone. No longer sixteen, grabbing pen and paper at soul’s stirrings, inspired by geese and fall, nor a young mother with growing children at her side, gazing upward at yearly flights. Now I am a grandmother, resting content that my grown children are tonight pointing skyward to show their children the path of the geese across the evening sky.
I run into the yard at first sound this year, in sensible shoes and reading glasses. I push white hair from my eyes and watch the geese until I can no longer see them, nor hear their haunting cry, and then I head to my little home and pen and paper.
The Call
It has not changed. The call, and the wild beauty of my Father’s world, His prodding us to look up and to tell our children, remains. Generation to generation, season by season, Canada geese, and joy, and sorrow, time and realization, all mixed up together, yet all gloriously ordered by my Father’s timetable.
Some year I won’t be here to run to see the geese fly away to a better place. My soul will have flown before them, across the sky, to a better place too.
Like the geese, I will obey the pull.
I, however, follow my faith, which, at long last, leads me—for all seasons—-to...my Father’s Home