The following “video essay” made me pause to look—really look—at a tree today . . . how its arms waved in the breeze, its green leaves in stark contrast to the blue sky.  I thought about how, even though it has lived on this earth longer than I have and will be standing tall, shading the park, long after I’m gone, it won’t always be here either.  Still, it is here now, and I am here now to enjoy it.  It is a miraculous gift—being alive on a gorgeous fall day beneath a sprawling oak tree!

I discovered this essay because its author, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, is a children’s book author whose work my sons and I enjoy.  Lately we’ve been reading her book, Little Pea, about a pea whose parents make him eat candy for dinner before he can have what he’s really longing for (spinach)!  She is so clever.  Among other titles, she has written two companion books to Little Pea:  Little Oink, about a pig whose parents insist that he mess up his room, and Little Hoot, about an owl who desperately wants to go to bed early.

Because I recently turned a year older, because her perspective is so fresh, because I can’t read this without getting teary-eyed . . . here it is: