Dispatch 22
I open my eyes. Sunlight has permeated the drab green canvas tent. It is hot and I am sweating. I hear the growl of the lawnmower outside. My father is mowing.
My father is mowing? I haven’t heard that sound in months. As the sleep clears from my brain, I wonder what he is doing. I open the tent flap and head outside. My sisters are still sleeping.
Outside the tent is a freshly mown path. One single lawnmower swipe through the tall, thick grass. What else can I do? I follow it.
To my seven-year-old legs, it seems to go on forever. It turns here and there, back on itself like a mountain switchback although this is a flat, grassy field. I smile because I know it is a game my dad is making for us.
I am short. Much of the grass is over my head. Except in the path. I follow.
Before long I see him. He is wearing his old red shirt and cut-off jean shorts. His back is wet with sweat and he is covered in grass bits. He doesn’t know I’m there yet.
He stops mowing. The silence is large for just a moment until I again hear the bugs and the birds. He turns to head back. That’s when he sees me.
He smiles although I have spoiled his game. At the end of his maze there is something waiting so the fun is not all gone. He points to a shrub. It is taller than him and very bushy. There are little berries all over it. They are so blue they are nearly black.
I pick a sun-warmed berry and put it in my mouth. It is delicious! I’ve never eaten a blueberry straight from the bush before. I never even realized a blueberry grows on a bush.
My father sees how happy I am to make this discovery. We eat a few more berries then head back down the path. It’s time to wake my sisters.
I still think about that morning sometimes. Not because of the blueberries, although they were excellent. I think about it because my father understood something I wouldn’t appreciate until much later: discovery is more meaningful when we find it ourselves. All he really gave me was a path and a reason to follow it.
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