Under a Magnolia Tree

I left the nursing home feeling restless. I had somewhere to be for a meeting, but not for a while yet. I didn't want to stop home.

The facility is on the most beautiful grounds and I so rarely stop and enjoy them before or after a visit to my elderly friend. It is at the highest point of Culver City. Trees of every variety punctuate it. Always there is a cooling breeze. And wildlife. I have actually seen a coyote on the other side of a high fence. Today, as I walked toward my car, a squirrel wiggled into and out of a large trash bin. We eyed each other, me making all those silly noises intended to ingratiate myself to wildlife that has no use for human interaction. After I tried to get closer he vaulted onto the fence and into a tree.

I noticed the little island of grass near my car shaded by one of the many magnolia trees on the property. I decided to say the rosary, something I am trying, without much success to do every day. I settled under the tree, the wind caressing me and the leaves wafting down around me. As I began, a resident, who happens to be a retired priest, was playing the soundtrack of the "Sound of Music", and there was the Alleluia of the marriage scene for a prayerful backdrop.

There were distractions. There always are distractions. One of the staff noisily dragged a large trash can toward the very large bin in which the squirrel had just previously been rummaging. She never looked in my direction. I somehow felt guilty being there. I doubt that anyone has ever sat under that particular tree. "What is she doing there?" I imagined she was thinking. Planes were gliding in regular intervals to landings at Los Angeles Airport over the cemetery, Holy Cross, where my father's wooden urn sits in a niche, my own niche, empty beside it. Many interrupting thoughts caused me to lose track of which "Hail Mary" in the decade I was saying.

Holy Cross Cemetery down the hill. 

There is a paradox about this place. It is so bucolic and life enhancing a site. But the people who live here are so rarely able to enjoy it. They are ill in body or mind, sometimes in both. They have little interest in the nature that surrounds them. Somehow it makes me poignantly in need of savoring that which I still can, my body and mind presently intact.

And then my rosary was complete with the recitation of the "Hail Holy Queen" and my restlessness overtook me again. I got in my car and left for my next appointment. Ordinary life goes on.