Blog 1111 – 09.11.2018

Yahtzee

Today many people will be remembering the tragedy of 911. September 11, 2001 when the twin towers were brought down and the terrible hate-filled taking of so many lives and the forever changing of so many others. I choose instead to remember Yahtzee. For those who do not know, Yahtzee is a game played with five dice for rolling poke hands. The object is to get three of a kind, four of a kind, straights, full houses etc. all adding up to the highest score to win the game, the highest single hand or roll being five of a kind called in the game a Yahtzee.

Walking the gas pipe line right of way yesterday morning, which is a part of my job, I spied this beautiful Yahtzee of blue dew covered flowers in the grass. I have written at length about a Helen Steiner Rice poem that I read first as a teenager years ago that begins:

“God has not promised

Skies always blue

Flower strewn pathways

All our lives through…”

The poet goes on to enumerate all the, to her at least, more important things that God has promised. But for me personally I cannot accept her first premise, for along my life’s path there have always been flowers, pretty flowers all in a row, so many and so lovely that for some time now I have taken to repeating a little personal mantra each time an especially pretty one catches my attention: “He shall have flowers wherever he goes.”

A perhaps more famous poet than Helen once wrote: “Gather your rose buds while you may…” As a true admirer of beautiful flowers and people I have learned that it is not necessarily to pick them to appreciate them, to collect them, or own them to enjoy their beauty and uniqueness. Oh, and I have picked a few and cherished them but far more I only loved and admired from afar.

In the game Yahtzee it is rare in a single game to get a Yahtzee and even more rare two, three or more but it happens more often that you might think. And when it does as in life one feels as special thrill. Keep your eyes and heart open and keep rolling – Yahtzees await around every turn and step and “She/he shall have flowers wherever he/she goes.” We do ourselves a disservice, I think, memorializing tragedies too much, recalling our losses. We should I think if we must memorialize anything remember our wins, our Yahtzees. The loved and lost would have us remember the good times as we remember them.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White