Spring is the time of plans and projects. (Leo Tolstoy)
My husband bought a mini Sequoia tree when we visited California last year. The seedling made it through the winter inside the house. The giant, ancient trees have lived to be three thousand years old—but not in the Midwestern United States. The bark may be fire resistant. But I’m not so sure the bi-polar temperatures of our region fit the needs of a Sequoia of any age. Two weeks ago layered clothing was a good idea. The air carried enough chill to make a polar bear feel at home. Today shorts and t-shirts are suitable attire.
Jay put baby Sequoia in the sun to soak up some rays. Unfortunately baby has been losing both color and a few limbs. Now it stands as a tiny, slender six-inch stick that could be mistaken for a pine twig blown into the ground after a storm. We both walk by baby. I won’t speak my thoughts. Jay loves this plant. If it survives I will call it Lazarus II. Jay takes care of the botanist life in our world. Plastic flowers may not be safe under my care. I have better luck feeding human creatures. I can intuit people needs more easily.
One morning as I am leaving the house I see a speck of green in the pot, not on the dried brown twig, but a few inches away. It is barely a quarter of an inch long and green as new grass. The new growth wears the same miniscule spikes that jut from its dried clay-pot mate.
Hope has been born. Tiny. One seed the size of an oatmeal flake can fail for the same reasons any seed doesn’t make it. When we were in one of the California national forests I took a picture of a game wheel that could be spun to discover whether or not your fantasy seed would survive to maturity or not. Would it land onto a rock, become bird food, or travel all the way into the ground and thrive?
Within hours the flash of green in the Sequoia pot yields to sudden summer heat and bends over. I lift it with my pinky, a useless move, probably causing more harm than good. Perhaps I touched it with my black thumb—don’t know.
Possibilities abound. I don’t think about them often. Even the circumstances that make each individual unique are amazing. Perhaps if my mother had conceived at another time a different sperm would have grabbed another egg and created a tall, blue-eyed boy who grew up to be as bald as a chunk of granite but learned to pitch a 90mph fast ball… or a gardener who would never allow a tiny sequoia to die. Okay, the sports hero stuff is unlikely in my family, but I like the notion. It’s a moot point from a realistic point of view, but a glorious one from a gratitude perspective. I am who I am and that needs to be sufficient. The fact of existence is in itself miraculous.
Dead sequoia should have gone out with the yard waste pick-up this morning. Then again, there’s always that fresh little sprout that could appear, even for a moment, even for that one miraculous, celebratory moment.
terrypetersen 