Monday, May 20, 2013
Cara: Taken for Granted
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Cara 
The Spring planting is underway. Every year I buy impatiens. You probably do too. I buy a flat or so, plant them in the same shady spot every year. I don't do much to them after that except make sure they are watered. They start out as little cells of flowers and end up being mounds of pretty little flowers that make quite a show by mid summer. Every year. Without fail. I buy them, I plant them, they look great.
Not this year. No impatiens. They have some kind of fungus so we can't have them. Can't buy them. It's not making me happy. I miss them. I have to rethink that shady spot under my back window. I don't want to rethink it. I want my impatiens. Dammit.
I realized, I always took them for granted. I always loved them. When I would see them in the hot house at the nursery, millions of them, I would want to buy them all. But I knew they would be there next year, and I would buy them again. Even though I loved them, counted on them to be in my garden every year for the 20 years I have been planting in my yard, I took them for granted. I figured they would always be there. And now this year that they're not I am missing those cheap little flowers.
Got me to thinking, of things I/we always take for granted. There's lots of things. Our health until someone we love gets sick. Then we start to think of when we should have called or when we got annoyed about something in comparison was insignificant.
How we send our kids off the school every morning and then complain that we don't have enough time to get stuff done cause they will be home any minute, taking for granted how they walk through the door every day, a little louder, a little dirtier but safe and happy.
Maybe we take relationships for granted because that person has always been there not matter what. But maybe we forget to tend to that relationship, and forget we can't just say hurtful things or break trust just because it suits us in the moment. Or we take to the next shiny new person who comes along and expect the old person to step aside. That person we take for granted may not be there the next time we need them.
We all probably can make a list of things we take for granted. My impatiens have reminded me to think twice about what I may have been taking for granted lately.....an old dog who just wants to be near me while I dig in my garden. The friend on my to do list who I need to call but can never find the time. The happiness in the daily round that makes up my day, taking for granted that here is really the only place I want to be. The days that seem to tick by so quickly that will soon leave me with a new normal.
In this whirring season of days filled with sports games, parties, ceremonies marking moments in a lifetime,sun, sand and watching waves crash on the battered shores of the places I have taken for granted all my life, I will stop if even for a second. I will remind myself not to take things for granted, because like my impatiens they may not always be there, and then I will miss them.
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