The Season of Hay Bales and Dry, Warm Grass

This is my Grandpa and myself back when I was about a year old. He passed away close to ten years ago now. A lot has happened in that time, perhaps most amazing to me is that life did indeed march on.
Since my Grandpa’s time I’ve returned to school, graduated, become a nurse and figured out who I am and who I want to be.
My boys who were just little guys are now planning for college, one starting this year and one next year.
I’ve lost over a hundred pounds.
Time does indeed go on.
This morning it was the first really warm summery morning of the year and I went to sit on my front porch with my cup of coffee as the Mr. cut the grass. I planned on reading a book as I sat down on the front stoop but the world caught my attention before I could find the page I sought.
The smell of the dry newly mown grass, the hot morning sunshine, the cracked pavement of my front walk, the birds hopping a long the driveway. I remembered my Grandpa then, like he was sitting there with me.
In this picture I’m sitting on top of hay bales at my grandparent’s second home, “The Farm”. It was never a working farm, never intended to be. But my Grandpa being of that Greatest Generation found leisure in hard work so he worked that vacation home of his harder than we work in our primary dwelling.
I am sure I can remember the hot sun beating down on my starched cotton bonnet. The feel of dry hay under fat baby hands and the smell of life and the outdoors; of pastures and sun- warmed fields.
My eyes can still feel the squint against the bright light and being ensconced in sights and sounds and smells and love and knowing, even at a year old that God is a mighty creator.
As I sat on my porch this morning I was glad for those soul memories. I considered it a wink from heaven, the warm dry grass of this first warm day. For that sweet inhale of summer, the smell of warm (and yes, warm does have a smell); somehow my Grandpa was still alive and my foundations were still being poured. All in an instant I was wrenched from a perch atop a hay bale to a step on my front porch and I realized; it’s all been intentional.
The Farm has no memory of me. Many seasons of hay bales have come and gone since that day when someone decided to snap a picture and capture this moment. Someday someone else will sit on my front porch with a cup of coffee in the summer sun and feel it is their own.
And they will be right.
But for me, I rejoice in the realization that in 1968 God formed a hay bale for me to sit on as He unfurled this marvelous life before me.
Someday I’m going to sit on another warm and dry hay bale breathing in the scent of heaven next to my Grandpa and tell him all about nursing school and little boys who grew up beautifully. In the meantime, I’ll sit on this stoop and watch life march on.
Days like grass that whither away are days to flourish like a flower in the field.
And we are formed with great intention.

Psalm 103:14-16
14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. 15 As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; 16 the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more