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Petunia
All my life, I have been accompanied by petunias but I have never really paid attention, until now. Today, I feel like a six-year-old again: discovering that flowers exist and that there are mountains capped with snow and that snow leopards are real. The novelty of a first time. Imagine: that this still happens well into adulthood! Come to think of it, is that why we are mostly very tired as grown ups? Is it because, by now, we all know what a snow leopard is, and that mountains are sometimes capped in snow, and we have all seen probably every species of flower that has existed since the time arachnids evolved their many legs (and eyes)? We’ve all heard about the tallest building, the richest man, and the longest river. Even the deepest lake with the meanest loch monster (we secretly all hope and pray it exists, and that, one day it will rear its head, make the news, and ignite all our senses with wonder once again!) But until the loch monster rises to save all our inner children; we remain tired. Don’t we? Because we’ve seen everything, we’ve decided our preferences, we’ve stated our stances and then we just are. We just are. We are just here, like this, and if we’re lucky we get to travel and perhaps see how sweet potatoes are roasted in a lantern-lit town over in Japan, or, taste a type of coffee bean for the first time while perched on an old stone in Montenegro. Fleeting moments of newness; we get to be the child, again.
It dawned on me while I was doing my rounds this morning. I have been walking around this same neighborhood for probably ten years now: nearly every morning and almost every twilight. In the mornings, I stop and stoop at the petunia gardens that so reluctantly grow alongside the buildings where nobody really looks. Or maybe they are not reluctantly growing, at all; I should reword this: they grow unstoppably where they have been reluctantly planted. There, that’s better. As if to intentionally show us all that they couldn’t care less about the reluctance of humans. I always stop to stoop and scoop a petunia between my fingers. I never pick her, I only hold her for a few seconds. I skim the skin of her petals and I say, “You are beautiful.” Then I go on with my day, I continue on my rounds.
Today, as I let the blossom snap back into place amongst her sisters, and the coolness of morning bit my cheek, it dawned on me that I have always been accompanied by petunias for as long as I can remember! They have become so common to my story that I believe I’ve taken them for weeds. I suddenly felt slight shame for my lack of awareness. How could I have allowed something so velvet and violet to blend into the background of my life? Certainly, such opulent hues of purple so velvety to the touch do not belong in anyone’s distant background. But instead of turning away from this shame, I felt that I wished to walk through it, and there, through the sidewalks and corners of my childhood roads and cities: violet petals came into focus! I had just made my turn at the corner of the cathedral where they were holding a church service, and the priest’s voice hummed the same homilies as the week before, when I smiled, beholding the scenes in my mind that were now all erupting with petunias!
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