A Wonderful Life

Today I noticed that somebody named Melanie wrote in the guest book that I keep in my U-Pick shed. “Forget Disneyland,” she wrote. “This is the happiest place on Earth.”

On Earth? I was stunned. And grateful. Of course, for me, the Upick IS the happiest place on earth. And I needed to be reminded of that, and realized for about the millionth time how easily we take for granted the best parts of our life when things aren’t going so well in other parts of it. This is a lesson it seems that I need to learn over and over.

I have sworn off looking at the falling stock market and reading all the bad news. At least for now. Today I am thinking about a close friend’s husband who was taken to Hospice House on Tuesday and is struggling valiantly to get through this final stage of life. He was diagnosed with kidney cancer in April, and it has been a nightmare for my friend and her family ever since. This is a good and gentle man, a thoughtful intellectual, a loving father, a stellar husband who is being taken from this earth. Life is not fair, this much I know.

I have the day off today as I do not work on Fridays at all, in order to keep up with the farm. It is one of those spectacular fall days on Omena Bay. The blue water is all the more stunning, set off by the emerging fall color backdrop of Omena Point. This is the first Friday since early June without bouquet making and deliveries. To wander from bed to bed, pulling weeds here, clipping back dead stems there, is a luxury. I have no agenda on this day other than to be at school in time to pick up my 9-year-old son, Will.

As I do my work, a monarch comes to rest on the nearby neon pink sweet William to drink the nectar. Neon is a new variety I planted this spring, said to be a true perennial. It is blooming again in a short burst of color after being cut back in June. The monarch slowly opens and closes its wings as it feeds. Uh oh, little fella, I think. You are a long way from where you need to be at this time of the year. How these fragile creatures make their long journey is one of life’s greatest mysteries, and, in my opinion, some kind of annual miracle.

When I see things like the monarch, or the rainbow on my way to school earlier this morning, I wonder, is this it? Did my friend’s husband pass over? Is this some sort of sign? I am a person who looks for signs, explanations. And then I think that perhaps the monarch was not a sign that a wonderful life had ended, but rather a reminder of the fragile journey that we are all on toward that destination.

Carolyn Faught is the owner of Omena Cut Flowers, a U Pick flower farm north of Suttons Bay. You can read more upicker guest book comments at http://www.omenacutflowers.com/upicktestimonials.html