Small talk led to deep talk, and I listened to a woman, decades my elder, share some events that may have broken me, had God put me in her shoes. Destruction of family land, loss of a child, and an unhappy marriage crumbling after forty years together.

I wondered what my grandfather would have said, as I reached for the radio dial, if he had known how his words would spread like wildflowers on a fertile field. So many hearts hungry for someone to care, to believe, to share faith in them, to know that they too mattered. If he hadn’t said those words, every time we said hello and good bye, if they hadn’t imprinted so deep in heart and memory, what would have filled their absence?

I sat in comfortable silence, just me and my dogs beside. No fire in the hearth, no music on the radio, just a quiet evening pause. It had been a long time and I had struggled in the interim to keep perspective.

I couldn’t shake the joy of wildflowers that spring. Bluebonnets, buttercups, Indian paintbrushes bloomed in abundance roadside, painting the world blue, pinkish white, and red-orange. Texas dogwoods added their soft hues while honeysuckle vines slowly unfolded along fence and abandoned gate.

The land bore scars like we all did: great gashes where a tornado fell century-old oaks, where a shed had once stood, and where a trailer had moved several yards east. I saw the blossoms more: of the dewberry vines creeping back, of daffodils left unattended for a handful of springs, and the light green of budding elms. Clover grew thick near ditches and away from cattle’s reach while Bahia grass stretched across pastures.