The Rock

There is an apple orchard where locals and tourists gather in the summer to listen to music and eat pizza.
It hasn't changed in the thirty years I have been coming here.

There is a large rock that protrudes from the ground just in front of the bandstand.

Children are drawn to it - to climb up on it - to dance on it - to fall of off it.

This summer as I watched a new generation of children on the rock I thought of my children, and my sister's children and grandchildren.

I could see each and every one of them on that rock.

My daughter in her pink island hat. My son in his crazy yellow pants. My nephew as he was learning to walk. My great-nephews dancing to the Marimba band with my then twenty-year old daughter.

That rock has held the weight of generations, has felt the warm brown feet of island babies, has been a stage to the lucky audience of parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, friends and lovers.

The rock has been a moment in time where someone stands on it proclaiming in their uprightness - I am here.

And I am so lucky to have been a witness to some of it.

The rock has been a witness to it all.