A Rose Is A Weed Is A Rose

Seeing the United Parcel Truck pull into my driveway; I opened the garage door knowing that another package has arrived helping us with the Christmas in July Party we were putting together for the orphans at a local orphanage.

As I stood watching the driver get the packages from the back of the truck; I saw Madison, my three year old granddaughter, picking weeds from the lawn.

“These are for my mommy and daddy,” she replied, as she held out a hand full of worthless little weeds. I just smiled and nodded my head as I looked at her tight little closed fist.

The UPS driver walked into the garage and sat the two packages down on the wooden bench. He and I stood talking about the numerous baseballs gloves, baseball bats, helmets and baseballs sitting about the room. I told him I had been raised in a Jacksonville, Florida orphanage and that during my entire childhood that I never once owned anything of my own. I told him that these presents were for the children themselves and not for the orphanage.

After taking for a few minutes the driver told me he had to leave. He waived and began walking back down the driveway. I turned around, locked garage door and began walking up onto the front porch. Just as I closed the dog gate, Madison came running up to where I was standing.

“My flowers my flowers,” she screamed aloud.

I soon realized that I had locked her weeds in the garage. “We’ll get them later,” I told her. I just did not want to walk back down the stairs and unlock the garage door for a bunch of worthless weeds. It just was not worth the effort.

Putting my hand onto her small shoulder, I began directing her back into the house. After about ten feet I stopped dead in my tracks.

“You can walk out to the garage for the kids in the orphanage but you cannot walk to the garage for your granddaughter?” I kept thinking. “Those baseball gloves are like gold to those orphan children just as those weeds are beautiful flowers to your granddaughter,” I thought.

I turned around, walked back to the end of the porch and opened the dog gate. Then I walked down the three stairs, took out my keys and opened the garage door. Madison ran past me, grabbed the little treasures, which she had picked but moments before, and she stood there smiling. I knelt down and looked through the green, now drooping, limp, sagging lifeless weeds and I smiled as I saw the beauty of a dozen beautiful red roses reflecting in her eyes.

~ Roger Dean Kiser ~

True stories from The Life and Times of Roger Dean Kiser
http://www.geocities.com/trampolineone/survive/srv080.htm

[ by: Roger Dean Kiser Copyright © 2007 (trampolineone@earthlink.net) -- submitted by: Roger Dean Kiser ]