The Seeds Planted by a Quiet Gardener: For My Uncle Oliver
The Seeds Planted by a Quiet Gardener: For My Uncle Oliver May 12 ,1921- January 24 , 2013 There are some people who enter your life not with a storm, but with a gentle rain. They do not shout; they nourish. They do not demand; they plant. My Uncle Oliver was such a man. The memories I have of him are sacred, guarded things. They do not shout for attention. They are like a handful of old letters, tied with a ribbon, kept in a box within the deepest roots of my altar. When I was nine years old, we visited him and my Aunt Florene in their big, beautiful home in San Francisco. I was a child with a mind wide open, full of questions about life, the universe, and everything in between. Where others might have dismissed my wonderings as childish imagination, he did not. He fed that open, curious spirit. He encouraged my imagination and spoke to me not as a child to be lectured, but as a soul on a journey to be guided. He was, I see now, planting seeds. So many seeds. A...
