Word Pictures

"Would you like to hold him?" my 18-year-old grandson asked. He was holding a baby goat, one of a set of twins born a few weeks ago. I gingerly took the gangly, appealing little creature on my lap and was immediately awed. It was like holding a kitten! Light as a feather, his coat felt like the softest down, fine and smooth. The little nubs on his forehead hinted at his future as a proud billy, but the startlingly loud "Ba-a" emitted plaintively every few minutes sounded like "Ma-a" as he called out for his mother.

A few of us sitting on the front porch after supper were soon joined by other family members pulling up a chair or rocker to catch the last glory of the sun as it dropped behind the mountains. A misty haze was already rising in the hollows, adding dimension and depth to these overlapping hills, part of the aptly named Blue Ridge or Smoky Mountains.

Our toddler great-grandson was poking around, fingering the grass or being called back from exceeding his boundaries on the sloping yard. "He loves nature," our daughter, his Mimi, noted. (I am Mimi the Great!)

"Show him how to blow a dandelion puff," I suggested to one of his doting young aunts. Soon he was pursing his lips and giving tentative little puffs, then smiling in wonder as the downy sphere exploded into dozens of air-borne seed particles.

My husband had been holding forth in conversation out here earlier, mesmerizing his young-adult grandchildren with stories of old New Orleans where he had worked for so many years. When I walked up, he looked at me as if to say, "You've heard all this before, I know you wouldn't be interested," so I left him with this rare treasure, a chance to spin his spell-binding tales for a new audience.

Now our grandson stood up to go on a quick run for store-bought desserts, his pretty girlfriend in tow. Stalwart and tall and silhouetted against the light, his chiseled features and muscular frame personifies youth and strength. Thank you, God, for family and for this time to enjoy them, and the vignettes captured in our memories against the backdrop of your creation. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills," the scripture says, "Where does my help come from? My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth."