Centennial Lakes

It was a beautiful day to walk around Centennial Lake with a good friend.

We passed a young man fishing from a dock and a mom with her two young children resting on a wide porch swing. There were ducks floating in the water waiting for someone to toss them stale pieces of bread.  We shared the winding path with people walking alone or with their dogs or with each other, and though autumn was fast approaching, the flowers were still bravely colorful.

The lovely day triggered a memory, but it was not a memory of a different walk around a different lake. I remembered years ago quietly resting on the ground under a tall elm tree at a nearby park. It was during my divorce, and like many other divorcing women, I was scared.

I laid on my back on un-mowed grass. The sweet grass smell and the feel of the hard earth  beneath me was comforting.

A thick canopy of leaves shimmered high above. It was only when the branches swayed in the breeze that I could see slivers of blue sky, yet I knew the sky was there, wide and filled with possibilities.  

Each narrow glimpse of sky reminded me how little of my future I could see or even imagine and how desperate that made me feel.  Imagining my future was like looking up through the leaves and only catching glimpses of what it might be, and I felt lost.

With the solid earth beneath me and the shifting leaves overhead, I decided to believe that my future was waiting for me, as promising as the hidden vastness of the sky, that this future would reveal itself in time and that one day I would be at peace, walking around a lovely lake with a dear friend.