Grandma visits the "Pure Land."

"Yesterday during walking meditation I saw two little violet flowers in the grass.  They were so beautiful, tiny, very well manifested, and I picked one and I picked the other, and I offered them to two venerable monks who had come to visit from Vietnam. I told them, these flowers are available only in the Pure Land..."   Thich Nhat Hanh

The phone wakes me at five fifty. My son is at the restaurant with my two grandchildren.  Twenty minutes later, cold and half awake I pull into the parking lot. 

A new spring snow begins to fall.  Looking through the restaurant window, I see a father who is up too early to be his young children's entertainment.  After some seconds my granddaughter glances up and sees me. Her giggles and wiggles in the high chair alert her father. He turns and smiles. I wave.  Then my grandson glances toward the window and a grin lights his face. 

Entering the restaurant, a blue dinky truck is thrust my way. He shouts with gusto, "I am going to play with Sammy today at my house." His sister bounces a little rabbit across the table joyously speaking one and a half year old which her Grandma does not understand, yet. The excitement at the table is palpable. Soon the other early risers are looking our way with smiles. 

Later, driving home, I ask myself where have I been? An aliveness, a vitality is in me that was muted if there at all when driving to the restaurant an hour before. Remembering the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, I know I have just visited the place of "Pure Land."  A place of joy and glee.  I was welcomed by it, splashed and played and felt it's pureness, its freshness unimpeded by anything human. 

How does one describe this pureness beyond form, beyond skin, bone and organs?  One doesn't of course. A grandma can only visit.