"We all make mistakes that seem to lead us astray. But everytime they help to get us where we are today. And it's as good a place as any, and probably where we're best off anyway." -- The Wailin' Jennys, "Heaven When We're Home".
I stood in the kitchen in the little house along the country road, looking out the window at the pearly luster of the snow-covered landscape in the late afternoon light as I washed and dried the dishes. Ella, my three year-old granddaughter by marriage, stood beside me on a stool, helping. Periodically I reached down to stroke her soft hair. Sue and our other granddaughter, one year-old Lyla, lay napping quietly in the living room.
In the silence and stillness of the moment, I felt a sudden strangeness. How did I come to be here? This wasn't in my plans. I never expected to find myself deep in the heart of the Ottawa Valley on a cold January weekend, in a house with three blondes, all dear as life to me. What decisions or fates brought me here, and what small, chance events might have taken me elsewhere? What other destinations might have awaited me?
For a moment I questioned my own competency to live this life, and the honesty of my choices -- if that's what they were. Could I be a grandfather to this beautiful little girl and her sister? Was it fair that I should ask for a place in their young hearts, while holding these doubts in my own? Could I continue to deserve the love of her Nana, and the trust of her mother? Or would that far line of field and forest eventually call me away, if not in body, at least in spirit?
Funny how much thought one can compress into a few instants.
I remember telling a friend that life is like a maze. We can't hold a vision of the whole path in our minds; we need a rule to get us to our destination, to tell us when to turn left or right. I believe that rule is, "do the most loving thing." Most of the time, hopefully, we get it right. And who's to know or to say if we come out at the right place?
Certainly not me.
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