Smile!

I am a week and a day late with this, but first, a belated happy birthday to Evelyn - Dick, it was good to hear you talk about of her double celebration last week, and Mom, I liked your poem for her.  And I never knew until this year that both of your mothers shared the same birthday!

This is from the post on my Confluence blog yesterday, the poem I wrote and Dan read at Grandma Bunny's funeral reception, but I think it might work just as well as a tribute to Evelyn, whom I know mostly through the smiles of her son and grandkids.


In Your Smile

She lives in your warm smile

     and your easy laugh,

     your purposeful hugs;

She lives in the way you keep house

     and home and family together,

     in the part of you too that would see the world;

She is in your eyes and all they have seen,

     in your hands resting gently on tired shoulders,

     in your heart of tender steel;

She drives with you through Minnesota,

     away from the cities and farms

     to where the trees turn birch

     and the lakes become personal;

She stands with you at the front door,

     welcoming, and again

     with your smile your laugh your hugs;

She will be forever the reason

     you are cousin, sister, brother,

     the ones to call her grandma,

     the man who named her Bunny;

She will linger

     in your lefse heritage, your Norwegian souls,

     in the percolating aromas of morning coffee

     in the happy of happy hour;

She will resonate

     in your day to day testimony,

     your quiet evening prayer,

     the hymn you hum.

Once she was the one

     who worked the lathe

     and weaved rugs

     and moved heavy stones to a beachfront dock;

It was not long ago

     she paddled a canoe

     and cleaned the fish we caught;

     not so long ago we drove to Idaho

And she worked crossword puzzles

     and knitted sweaters

     and baked pies and cookies

She would gently massage the knots out of your neck

     without you ever asking

     and one day she hugged you 
           from the back of your chair

     and said I am so happy you are here.

Now you hike through the woods

     and walk a beast of a dog;

     you find your lifelong companion

     and you keep planting trees

     and watching them grow;

And you travel the world

     and you never run out of places to go

     but you keep coming home

To sit on the deck, to watch

     the rising sun, the setting sun

     or in the house by the hearth

     you watch the fire

And you will hold this as long as you can,

     maybe you will glimpse heaven,

     or simply appreciate the moment

But you will smile

     and she will live on in your smile.