When parents talk about having a child who is ill or struggling, nonparents often take the wrong message. They think, Thank God I was spared all that pain. If I can’t order up the precise specifications for my child, the condition in which he emerges, the choices he’ll make, if I can’t be assured that he’ll skirt the dangers that await him, maybe it’s better not to have children at all.
Those of us who know the airless terror of the 10 steps between the second you first glimpse your child’s surgeon through the glass doors and the moment he’s standing in front of you, delivering the verdict—we don’t think this way. Each time one of ours is ill or in pain, we think, Thank God I am here for him.
My associations with palm trees are the same as yours. Your lovely photo might have illuminated a story in Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible. I seem to recall that palms are not native to Florida (e.g., http://lee.ifas.ufl.edu/Hort/GardenPubsAZ/Florida_Native_Palms.pdf ), although they arrived long before the other prevalent introduction, water hyacinth, that with pines so often dominate the view.
Laurna – I don’t suppose palms are indigenous to Arizona either, but they’ve found a welcome there nonetheless. (Refugee trees, perhaps?) I’ve not seen the Holy Land except in photos – I think it looks better in Bible illustrations . . .
And I hear there are many rooms in the inns; tourism is way down thanks to the hostilities. A good place to stay away from. Safe travels!
Yes, I think we’ll pass on that part of the world. We’re home safely from this last spate of travel – and 1/3 of our luggage with us . . .