A View from the Hills
Greta has come to take me to Foothills Park. Greta, a lark, is up and out in the brisk morning air for a five mile hike with gentle Homer. I attempt to dissuade her, remind her I am an owl and moribund before noon.
"I will drive you. We will walk only a little to a bench in the sun and enjoy the nature."
Greta has brought bananas and grapes, "enough for both." Since I "must eat," I snatch an extra apple and banana from my fruit basket, and we pile into her Toyota with Homer who offers doggy kisses from his back seat perch.
The air is cold and biting at the gate, but Greta assures, "You will be warm in the sun."
Croatian Greta is disturbed by news of her native land and the carnage at a Colorado school.
"I have asked my son to come and disconnect my TV."
She will forego her beloved nature programs and the concerts she adores. She has discontinued the newspaper as well, deciding, "I don't need to know anymore."
Shivering, I follow the narrow path to a bridge and our bench in the sun. "Here you will be warm, Mary dear." I relax and prepare to sink into the peace of Greta's refuge, begin to understand from whence the serenity in her intelligent face derives.
"Can you imagine," Greta mourns, "those poor children."
Overhead a pair of red-winged blackbirds are communing. Face alight, Greta pauses. "Shh. You will hear. Listen to the trees. Each sings a different song."
We break out our fruit, and as we eat, Greta considers a recipe for Utopia. Remembering the mother, groomed as a concert pianist, who renounced her dream so she could marry and have children, Greta harks back. "She played classical music to us in our cradles."
Greta would start every child with music. And books. She had done the same for her son and daughter. I strolled around the rushes hoping for a glimpse of the amorous bullfrog who croaked so forcefully from his watery bower.
How would the modern mother, bound to a full-time job, shuttling her children to and from day care, burdened with weekend chores, find time for leisure and pleasure with her family?
And how, given movies, television and cults that foster and glorify violence and death, do we stem the tide, reverse the trend, make the dysfunctional functional? Truly a more formidable challenge than the labors of Hercules.
Yet here, in the peace of "God's little acre," with our hearts at rest in the moment, we were bemused with the dream. We finished our fruit, rolled our litter into a ball to stuff beside the birder's binoculars in Greta's back-pack.
On the path beside still waters Greta admired the blue lake that she likens to the Adriatic where she spent summer vacations. A crushed soft drink can lies in the road. With a disapproving snort Greta retrieves it. "Another thing." She would teach the children "never never" to defile the Earth with their debris. "EEYO!" she deplores, "But this is terrible."
God gave us this house - and it was good. But man may not deserve it nor prove a proper custodian for the world with which he's been blessed.
In Greta's refuge the answer seems simple and as logical as a mathematical equation.
From Greta's whispering trees the words "love one another" sound soft, but clear. Is it possible that, flawed as we are, puffed with our own conceits, bloated with our pride and prejudice, those three small but profound words could make a difference to teach us to love even that which is unlovable?
We drive through the gate, back to our separate worlds. But deep within, the peace of this sunny place has soothed, and given us a measure of joy, and hope.
Mary Cristy is a Los Altos Hills-based free-lance writer and longtime contributor to the Town Crier.