The day you deserve

Among the bumper stickers on the battered little car in front of me was one that said Have the Day you Deserve, and I'm not sure what more a person can ask for. 

Today, apparently, I deserve to drive along a tranquil river reflecting abundant sunshine, and I deserve to enjoy the rhododendrons and azaleas that make Marietta the prettiest little town on the planet this time of year, and I deserve to walk past fragrant lilacs and see the peonies just beginning to bloom on campus, and I deserve to nab the parking closest to my office--so close, in fact, that I can look out my office window and wave to my adorable little car, not that it would notice.

I parked next to the President's residence, which still shows signs of damage from the nasty hail-and-wind storm that battered Marietta last month. All over town I see fly-by-night hail-repair services popping up, and I hear about scam artists offering great deals on repairing roofs and windows. I don't know what my colleagues did to deserved pockmarked cars, leaky roofs, or broken glass panes in the greenhouse dangling overhead like the sword of Damocles. The storm was very localized and selective, smashing holes in siding and windows all over one side of a house but sparing the others. On one street I saw three houses in a row with big blue tarps over holes in the roofs, but the next street over has none.

I missed the big storm because I was in Columbus helping my son wend his way through chemotherapy and all the indignities of cancer treatment. Not sure what any of us did to deserve cancer, but that's not how it works, is it? If the book of Job tells us anything, it insists that rewards and punishments are not equitably distributed--that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Or the hail, as the case may be.

What did we ever do to deserve cancer is just as ridiculous a question as What did we ever do to deserve peonies? Gratuitous suffering lives on the same block as gratuitous beauty. But I can't think about that this morning. Instead, I plan to accept the peonies as one small part of the day I deserve, even though I did absolutely nothing to earn it.