What is the purpose? What good does it serve? Will it make any difference? It won’t change anything. Should it change anything? Or just change how I see things?

I have an appointment shortly. I have been wondering what to say, how to start, where to begin. I’ve asked myself what I want to accomplish with counseling. I want to be me. I want to figure out who I am. What do I want out of life? Am I happy? Am I going through motions? What does true joy feel like? I know what I believe long-lasting happiness is. Can we have joy now? Or do we need to wait for some time in the future?

Lots of questions and pondering. So, while I wait, this gives me a few minutes to write a blog post about asparagus. Yep! Asparagus!

My memories of Memorial Day weekend as a child are of my parents, siblings and grandparents driving to the cemeteries to pay respects to our great-grandparents and other family members who have passed on, and stopping along the way home to hunt asparagus on the ditch bank along the roadway. It is springtime, so the grassy ditch banks are always lush green, which made spying the asparagus a bit challenging, but did not deter us from finding and picking enough for Grandma to make a pot of her delicious cream of asparagus soup.

This is a family tradition. One I was so excited to share again this year! So, on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, while my brother’s traditional rotisserie pork roast was cooking in the grill, my sister and niece and I drove to our secret ditch bank to pick some asparagus for soup with dinner. Only to discover much of it had been picked. But, we persisted in walking the ditch bank and searching for those hidden gems missed by the previous hunters. Our persistence paid off, and we took two large handfuls home.

There wasn’t time to make the soup for dinner, so I said I would make a pot of soup for mom and dad on Sunday. My dad was less than enthusiastic. Come to find out, my dad only ate it because his mom made it. It was ok, but not his favorite. My mom doesn’t like it at all. Neither does my sister or her family. Nor does my brother. What?!! All these years!! I had no idea!! I always felt like asparagus soup on Memorial Day tied our family together…the living to those who had passed on!!

Well, I made the pot of soup for my husband and six-year-old grandson. We ate all but half of a bowl of that deliciousness! My extended family may not like the soup, but Memorial Day weekend, for me, will always be synonymous with asparagus hunting, making soup, and family time. Both, on this side of heaven, and the other!