Following Old Paths

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Blogger: Today With PokieToo and Parkinson's Disease - Formatting Settings

A long lost feeling crept into my being today, one that I have not felt for over a year. I went to the garden to pick a few tomatoes and felt that old "farmers rush" for the land. I may have been running from this feeling.....silly me. A farmer I am through and through. Many a good hour has turned into a day tilling a garden and making sure absolutely no weed was left hiding under that special tomato plant I had ordered from so far away. Every row was straight and marked and as volunteer plants appeared, I carefully marked and moved them in new rows. My garden was a show place and I knew it. I had bird baths and windchimes and whirlygigs. I even moved the grass around it and had chairs under the old apple tree so one could sit and survey the surroundings. For two years now I have refused to think about these feelings because I knew I could not do the physical work required for perfection, but did it need to be perfect and did it need to be huge? Would just a simple raised bed in the sunshine had sufficed?
When I left for the birth of my last grandson my kids hauled my goats away.....Sadie and her two kids, Yopn and PD. I had raised Sadie from six weeks old. At age seven she blessed me with twins. She never missed a day of bringing them to the back door to show them off and then they were gone.
My children meant well. The billy goat had broken my leg in the winter out of jealousy and ended up as sausage. Yet, some things that are your life need to be sacred and safe from harm. Today as I picked those tomatoes I missed the smell of the earth and joking with the goats. I missed the feeling of peace in the open spaces. It will no longer be ok for me to take vitamins because I am not in the sunshine, because I will be outside hobbled or not. What fits into the children's schedule may not be good in my schedule. I realize this makes me crazy and hard to handle in their terms, but if they can remember back I have always been a loner. I have worked like a man most of my life...not because I wanted to but because I had to and what has it gotten me? Arthritis and pain but when I was working I was satisfied and healthy and God willing the South will rise again. If it is nothing but a walk to the garden or a morning stroll around the lake I am getting back out where God had me in the first place. God has been right there waiting for me, yet the recliner seemed easier and soon the day was gone.....the devel was in the recliner and fell for it. So all bets are off and I am going back to the old me......slower and older and much more febble but happier.....love pokie