Rocks and Roses

Forward by My big Sister

 After our Dad passed away last year, my sisters and I felt a deep well of sadness rise inside each of us that can be communicated with one question "Why Didn't Dad take us to work too?"
 There were 10 Born (in total) 6 boys and 4 girls, and our brothers grew up going to work with Dad. They learned his trade, Natrual Stone masonry, and were able to travel with him everywhere his jobs took him.  The girls stayed home. It sounds very dramatic but we felt unwanted and neglected; the boys left the house and had these great adventures, and the girls were left behind. Most importantly they got to know a father we didn't get to see very much.
                  After my father died I was personaly effected. My younger brother, Aaron (who worked along side my Dad)  said the most comforting words to me. He said, “ I wish you could have heard Dad talk about his girls.” I was surprised with this new information! I didn't know my Dad thought about the girls at all; especially not at work.
                  My brother described the tender feelings my Dad had for his little girls. My childhood heartache was soothed by a few memorable things he shared.
                   I asked him to write those thoughts down in a poem or a story to share with my  sisters. I thought it might help me, and possibly them, to gain closure from haunting childhood memories and be at peace with our father.
                  Aaron wrote it as a story In our Dad's familer if not unique style, a style I didn't know until now. I'm grateful my brother knew his language. The story has a wealth of information of my Dad's all to familiar behaviors to help all my siblings understand how he felt about his children even the boys.  -- CS

 

 

Rocks and Roses

By Aaron Miller, inspired By My Father, to his daughters.
I post this with their blessing.

The sun slowly rose over the dry river bed. The dew lay glistening in the awakening sunlight. The air was dry and warming but still cool, and the first rays cast a yellow luminance on the world that would only last a few more minutes.

A beat up old truck came bouncing down alongside the dry bed, slowing down to carefully navigate its way into the stream and continue to the middle. It stopped and a man stepped out; he took a long drink of the ice-cold Pepsi he just bought, condensation dripped off the can as he threw it back. He winced as he finished, one eye tightly closed and he shook his head as if it would help ease the effects of cold carbonation. “Ewe that’s good!” he said as he placed the half full can onto the dashboard of his truck.

He put on his hob-nob gloves and adjusted his truckers hat and got to work throwing nice flat stones into the truck bed. The sun slowly rose and its rays warmed the dew, casting imperceivable vapers into the air causing a light humidity in the wash, causing the man to sweat. He stopped a minute and stretched his weary back a bit. While stretching he noticed a beautiful rose bush with baby rose buds nearly ready to bloom. He was an outdoors man, and appreciated everything God created, and especially loved the beautiful flowers in the washes and quarries and valley’s that he traveled while collecting stone for his various Jobs.

He always stopped to admire the loveliness of it all. He smiled and tipped his hat at the rose bush and if it was real. He went back to work and was soon done. He finished off the now flat and warm Pepsi, deemed it a “dud” threw the can onto the passenger side floor board and started up the truck.

The fully loaded truck drove smoother on the bumpy path that lead out of the wash. He had driven it a couple times and knew the right turn’s and which dry streams to cross until he reached the safety of a paved road. He stopped the truck, got out, and carefully checked each of his tires, he was looking for little rocks that could get lodged into the dual tires of his truck and cause a tire failure down the road. Not just a flat…but a blowout that could be bad news.

           Satisfied he was safe, he started up again, and let his mind wander. He thought about the little rose bush, he thought that if it were alive then it would have been watching him. He chuckled and stopped at the gas station for gas and a cold Pepsi

          He returned to the wash a few days later and stopped next to the rose bush. He had his arm out the window and looked at the blooming bush.

         “Hello there bush, you rose bush, you.” he said. “You’ve got a beautiful bloom going on”

He got out of the truck after finishing his Pepsi (with a loud smack of his lips) and started working. Yet as he worked he was thinking about the little rose bush as he gathered the rocks, throwing them one by one into the truck. He was hot, tired, thirsty, but he needed to finish his work or else it would never get done, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that the roses were watching him. Every now and then would say hello to them as he passed them.

             “Hello there rose bush, I see you haven’t moved an inch since I arrived. Keep growing up up up!” he said in animated tones. When he finished loading the truck he started to leave and waved good bye to the roses and as he did he imagined he heard them ask.

 “Can we come too?’

“No little rose bush” he replied “You gotta stay, but I’ll be back” and he left.

 Time passes, the seasons change and the man aged. And yet year in and year out he found himself inside the wash taking stones, greeting the roses as he passed and even doing what he could to prune them and give them good fertilizer. He greatly enjoyed how they changed from visit to visit and look forward to seeing them, yet every time he left he imagined them asking to go with him, and he lovingly told them that he would be back.

              Then he came, and he was old. The years of hard labor had not been kind to him, and he hobbled and limped, he winced as he struggled to opened his Pepsi, He looked out at the rose bush and offered it some and said “You want a little freindo freindo?” laughed at his own joke and took a long drink, smacking and moaning in delight.  He opened the door of the truck and poured himself out and stumbled as he straightened himself.

             “Well!” he laughed in a surprised tone as he looked the bush over, It was now more like a tree, and the roses were vibrant. “Aren’t you a lovely sight for sore eyes” he sat down in the shade of the "tree" and let the pleasant scents wash over him and feel the cool breeze. He was  old done taking rock's, he knew he didn’t come all the way out here to collect them, he couldn’t pick them up anyways. He pulled out a camera that he hobbied with making "movies" to share with his grandkids and started recording.

            “Well…here I am with this, beautiful rose bush” he said “After all these years I have come here to take away rocks, this rose “tree” has been here like an old friend. And every time I leave I can hear it call out to me “Take me with you!” and every time I know I can’t” he traded hands with the camera. “And, you know?” he said contemplating “I see here that this bush isn’t really a bush at all but four beautiful daughters” he choked a bit on tears. “Because they often asked me if I could take them. And I can’t help but feel like It was them saying it the whole time, through this beautiful rose bush.”

He backed up to get the whole bush into the view of the camera, then panned out at the river bed “I have taken a lot of rock out of this wash here, and I mean a lot of rock over the years, and every time I do, I see this rather beautiful rose bush asking me to take it with me and I’m here to give this bush an answer.”

            The pointed the camera back at the bush, and zoomed in on the rose’s which were in full bloom. “Hello rose bush, how are you? I hope you are doing good, you look great. You have asked me more than once to take you with me as I leave here with all the rocks and here is my answer, for you, today, which is, I couldn’t.”

“You saw me take the rocks and leave you behind, but I couldn’t take you where I took the rocks.”

 “Here, you could grow, a living thing to grow and get strong, and have little buds.  I took the rocks, and well… they were tools, very useful and strong and important in their own way, and I needed them to do my work, but I left them where I placed them, set in mortar.”

 I couldn’t set you in mortar, and I couldn’t keep you safe as you went with me. I was busy, and it was hard.” He took a step and nearly lost balance.

“Look at me! shriveled and bent, my body was once strong but now it’s quite crappy! I can’t even hold this camera right.” He chuckled sarcastically, as he readjusted his precarious grip on the camera.  “You know roses bush? I have four beautiful daughters at home and as I talk to you I am really talking to them. They asked me to take them too, but I couldn’t take them for the same reason I couldn’t take you. Because I wanted you…and them… to be lovely, I was trying to protect you/them. I left you to grow freely, to shine in your own ways. I tried to give you the best nourishment that I could…and probably didn’t do that so good, but I did what I knew how. But I left you to be able reach for your own light.”

 “I took the boys” he sighed “This is true, just like I took the stones, they were my rocks, just like the girls were my roses. I can tell you, that I never wanted my boys to be rocks, and I didn’t want them to be hammered in, I didn’t want them in this crappy business. I call it crappy because…”

He stopped and wiped tears that were starting to down his face, “…because I just wasn’t smart enough to do anything else, this work made me dumb, and you had to work twice as hard as everybody else, or more! To get half as much out of it! And even though I tried to get out Many many times, it just pulled me back in. and so I was never home. I made the ultimate sacrifice for you, my time, so you could grow” he grimaced as if in pain, as he fought back more tears. “I wanted them to be roses” he said “But this work wore me down and if I wanted to keep you safe and fed and clothed and keep a roof over your head I needed to take them to help me in my work. They were rocks, tough, strong smart, able to put in a good day’s work and do it repeatedly, I set them in mortar and they stayed where they were.”

“And in many ways, I feel like I might have cursed them, but as with any curse comes blessing after the trials. You were cursed to stay; they were cursed to go. Yet I want you to know something that is the same. I love you. I loved you this whole time, and even though I left, I didn’t leave you, I always came back, you can’t leave what you come back to. You were a figure 8 in my life. As I worked the stone, and the boys. I left the roses and my daughters to grow and live, and look at you now. Each of you, so beautiful and so different, and amazing. You, have different pedals and found light in different ways and you even smell different, like my daughters, they have voices like angles, and are so strong and beautiful in their own unique and amazing ways. They are all great woman now, and I am so proud of them and they all have amazing children, amazing legacy’s in my life, and their own. They are major feathers in my cap…"

He turned off the camera. And took a big deep breath. The emotions of his mind over ran his ability to speak. his mind was blown.

He laid down in the shade of the roses moved his hat over his face and took a nap.

 He woke up an hour later and gathered his things and got back in his truck. He closed the door. And looked at the roses. And said “Well… this is so long; I won’t be back” his eyes teared up he looked away up the stream and got an idea.

He took out the camera turned it on and pointed it down the river bed and stated “Here is my road, I made this road over years of coming to this wash. When I first came here I drove over grass and shrub and even a tree of two. Now it’s a road, deep and cut into the ground, you can see it clearly and could follow it to where ever I have been. This is like a road of life, I made this and you are welcome to travel it to see where I have been, its your road now to follow, or pave off from.” To my daughters, if you were here with me now I would tell you this. Don’t let the rain or clouds of life put out your light. Just let it shine and when you do, remember me; because my sacrifices are the only inheritance I can give you. You wanted boundary’s, but I gave you a road.  It’s yours to travel and if you get lost ask the rocks, they can teach you everything you didn’t get to experience, you get the knowledge without the suffering…” he laughed at his cleverness

“…but anyways” he slowly continued “I love you, and in the end, that’s all I have to give, and that’s all that really matters I love my rocks and my Roses”

He turned off the camera and slowly drove out of the wash. Over the well driven road. Out onto the paved road, where over years of experience and habit, he got out and hobbled all around the truck looking for stray stones in the tires, got back in, went to the gas station, got a cold Pepsi, and drove home.