Two Roses

I had been sick with that awful flu that leaves you feeling too weak to stand and was home from work but feeling a little better. I wondered if just a small bit of physical activity would help, but even standing sounded like work. So I thought I would try to water the roses.

I slowly uncoiled the hose, turned the water on a small stream and began. This is a job I seldom do, the task falling almost always to my wife, and on the rare occasion I do it, it is always with the water full on so that it would be done as quickly as possible and we could be on to something more interesting.

This time things went slowly, which was fine by me. I stood holding the hose and just watched the water slowly come out, sink in and then start to pool around the roots. It took quite a while to water a bush.

It was January in California and warm and sunny. After a few of the bushes in front of the house were completed, I realized I felt better. It was the first useful thing I had done in days and there was a certain satisfaction in finally accomplishing something. More than that, I was very much enjoying every moment of this work.

With the roses in front finished, I moved around back and continued with the hose back there in exactly the same way. On the second bush was the only rose I had seen so far and it was still a fairly tight bud. What a beauty it was, and more so for its rarity and my appreciation of that day.

On the adjoining bush there was another rose, although at quite another stage. It had its center standing tall and no petals at all save a few still clinging at its very base. Even so, they still had some color, and you could tell it had been a pretty thing a few days earlier.

As I looked back and forth between the two roses, I saw that it was a parable of man, of life — so full of beauty and promise in the bud, so eager to burst to full splendor. And looking at the spent one, it still held those traces of its old glory which was but a few days past.

I looked again and said, “Teach me to number my days.”