PATIENT ENOUGH TO WAIT
Hanging on a nail in the den of my father’s house in Alabama is a dried, dipper gourd. It gleams with shellac. It is very old. That common gourd has one unusual feature: its stem is tied in a single, permanent, overhand knot. In boyhood I asked my dad, “How did the knot get there?” He smiled and explained, “Your grandfather, Papa Fleming, was a farmer. He taught me about patience, and he didn’t even know I was learning. You see, Papa tied that knot.” “How did he do it without breaking off the gourd?” I wanted to know. “While the tiny gourd was green and growing, I watched him go out in the heat of the day and bend the young stem a bit,” Dad said. “Each day he would carefully secure it with a piece of cloth to keep it in place. Papa never missed a single day. He bent it just a little more every afternoon. Days…
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