Sunday Places Notebook - Heaven Must Be Here
My Sunday Places Notebook takes me to a near yet far away place because it can only truly be reached through a child’s heart. We call it Heaven Must Be Here. It leaves tomorrow behind and is nestled somewhere between now and those forever days.
Here, at our cottage on the shores of Lake Huron, time stops as we know it. An old grandfather clock from the early 1900’s has its patinated hands permanently set at 3:34 p.m. We chose not to fix the frozen keeper of hours. I often wonder what happened at that moment on the day of a distant year. I feel that it must have been a memorable one, not a significant event, rather a special moment in time when a butterfly stretched its art wings to the sun, when the forget-me-nots offered a timid wave in a gentle breeze, and when the lake’s ebb and flow circled a beach rock in perfect and beautiful geometry.
Here, the wind caresses cheeks and whispers sweet nothings. Listen. Did you hear that? The heavenly child can play tricks rustling through the old wise trees.
Here, a symphony performs from dawn to dusk. If you listen carefully there are a myriad of instruments that key in harmonically as if guided by a master conductor. Small petals dance to the sonata strings of long summer field grasses and the drums of hummingbird wings keep all to the beat.
Here, silence has its own melodic tune; hauntingly mesmerizing and beautiful.
Here is where my favourite flower blankets the ground each spring. I’ve always loved the delicate little white bells and their sweet smell. They take me back to a childhood storybook where Mother Earth’s root children celebrate new beginnings with large lily of the valley lanterns.
Our Eden tree stands constant in a small garden island within the surrounding waters. It romances the rising sun and purple sunsets with its wispy silhouette. The hot summer surrounds it with bright chlorophyll green, water lilies, and wildflowers and offers a canvas of meandering Monet strokes; my live masterpiece.
Here is where wishes are made through dandelion heads against a fiery end-of-day sky.
And when the twilight touches the lake, illuminated trees strung with hammocks stand still and quite to give the stage to lonely bullfrog calls and distant night bird songs.
Heaven must be here.