These Numbered Days

Photo Credit: Ryan Roth-Klinck

By Andrea Lingle

The following is based on Psalm 90.

The man sat by the entrance of his home. His skin was loose and brown, weathered by the steadily accumulating years. The moments of his life stretched around him like a spreading pool of rich green olive oil on a table top. The years of his life had been many, but his thoughts had been reduced to one or two. What had he learned from his lifetime? The sky stretched farther than a man could see and the land went deeper than a man could dig. Beyond that, who could say? Who could tell if the harvest would be lean or plentiful? Since he did not know, he did not say. It would come. He would praise his God. He would press the olives. He would sit by his doorway. And that was the turning of the seasons. His mind soared over the landscape, free from the uncertainty of what his life would become. He was. 

“Son, bring me the digging stick.” The stick was brought. The hand was young and strong and as he quickly loosened the soil around each of the olive trees, he spoke quickly.

“Father, there was a merchant in town today. He told me that he had been to Egypt. He said I could go with him to tend the camels. I would only have to serve him for one year, then he would give me a camel and a bundle of goods and I could become a merchant too. I could go to the edge of the world.” His voice prattled on and on while his hands worked the soil under the ancient trees. His father removed a sucker from the base of the tree with a sharpened stone. 

“I could see the pyramids and smell the sea. I could bring you spices and silk.” His mind was full of the horizon, and his hands hurried through the tasks of caring for trees. The trees that were their life. Trees that had never seen beyond the edge of the valley between the three hills that had heard the first cries of his great, great, great, grandfather’s grandfather. The door of their home, shiny with age and use, had been carved from the trunk of an olive tree that was gnarled with age when that grandfather’s children climbed it’s branches. “I could bring mother jewels and flowers from the great gardens.” His father folded dung into the furrowed ground. He dipped his forefinger into a tiny jar he wore around his neck, and touched the bark. He whispered a prayer.

He had walked far beyond the valley of the three hills. He had danced with the wind and sung with the sea. He had brought spices to his father and jewels to his mother, and told his tales. Now he sat under a door, shining with oil, carved from the trunk of a tree that had born the fruit his great, great, great grandfather’s father had picked. Now he sat, quiet. His life spread out like joy around him.