Some Prayers Take Time

A few months ago, me and the boys planted tulip bulbs in the back yard.  

Anne Lamott talks about the practice of planting bulbs as a form of prayer.  Prayers that take place in the dead of winter when the ground is cold and hard and wet and you can see your breath.  Even as you plant the ugly suckers you wonder if they'll ever bloom and if they do how could something as gorgeous as a tulip come from something as ugly as a shriveled bulb.  

But the truth of it is, is that the winter was a hard one for the watsons.  Men we dearly loved and who dearly loved us passed on leaving us with a lot of tears and questions and sadness.  And sometimes when you get into that place the best thing to do is to get outside, regardless of weather, and wrap your hands around things that are older than you.  

And that's how we came to plant bulbs in January.

In the days immediately following the planting, the boys would continue to return to the backyard garden where they were planted and check on them.  Finally they asked me when the flowers would come up.  "Not for a couple of months", I'd tell them.  I'd tell them that its too cold now, but now is the right time to plant them.  But they won't show their face until the cold goes away, the rains come, the time changes and the days get longer.  "They probably won't arrive until after Easter".  

Easter.  That holiday that reminds us that life always overcomes death, seeds have to die for the flowers to arrive and things buried, will ultimately come back.  

The boys have forgotten, for the moment, about the bulbs.  It's been months after all.  But since Easter, this first easter since my dad went from life to Life, I've been checking on them.  Seeing how their doing. Waiting for their blooms.  Hoping that the prayers buried in cold black soil on a wet Saturday in January will find their way to the light and show their smile to remind us that some prayers take time.