Simplicity | A Gift of Time
You want a fence for Mother’s Day? They asked incredulously, only half-believing this odd request.
Yes. That’s right. A fence. For Mother’s Day. Admittedly, though it was a gift, they wouldn’t really be able to wrap it or tie it with a bow, but these were trifling little details, anyway. If these three big guys of mine, who all happened to be home frequently through the month of May, were willing to gift a bit of brawn by tearing out the old fence, digging holes, setting new posts, and attaching stringers to create the framework for the new fencing, who even needs gift wrap and bows?
I suppose it all goes back to simplicity in gift-giving. For sure there are times when the just-right item is found, paid for, wrapped and tied and given with excited anticipation of seeing the recipient’s face. But also? Seeing time as gift, strength as gift, help as gift. Remembering that we all have something to offer someone who’s celebrating that doesn’t cost a thing, save for our own effort and a slice or two of time.
The guys pulled their leather gloves on, heaved rotten posts, rolled crumpled wire. They trimmed the fractious grass to the ground, and dug holes nearly three feet deep. They set posts and tamped dirt. Tamped and tamped and tamped the dirt. Checked level, then tamped some more. They marked and sawed and screwed. They chatted and laughed. They drank a lot of root beer. And they built a fence in the warming sun over a scattering of springtime days.
Although I’d asked for what I thought was one gift, I realized they were giving me another one, too. It was the memory of watching them working together like that, in cut-off shirts or no shirts at all, muscles bulging, hats on backward or forward depending on the guy, building something with their own six hands to give their mama for Mother’s Day. This, I realized was the gift wrap and bow.
Every day for seasons to come, when I look at this fence, I’ll get to re-live, like a film playing in my mind, how my big boys made this for me. A new part of the landscape, a gift of privacy and beauty, of posts and stringers and heather twigs woven together, becoming a trellis of sorts for climbing vines to scurry up.
A fence from my guys for Mother’s Day. Gosh, loves, does it get any better than this?
