We weren’t sure what it was. Had to look it up. Like, way up.
Turns out – eventually it’ll turn out – it’s apparently a sunflower.
Just a bunch of random seeds for $1.00 all planted together in the garden space and suddenly, reaching for space, it seems like overnight, there it was.
Jack and the Beanstalk, the sequel.
Once, for Mother’s Day, I gave her a spindly twig in a pot.
The label claimed it was a pink weeping cherry blossom tree but without my help I was sure that’s what she would do when she received it: weep.
No flowers, not even prospects for flowers, just a stark-naked stalk with connected branches here and there.
So, I also purchased a picture book of blossoms, cut and Scotch taped to those otherwise bleak branches: rhododendrons, tulips, crocuses, roses, even forget-me-nots.
And daffodils.
It was . . . colorful.
She didn’t weep but she was shocked.
“What is it?”
“Well, officially, it’s a pink weeping cherry blossom tree, but you’d never know it.”
“How ‘bout we plant it and then we’ll see?”
Turns out it was.
Turns out that’s true of us too.
What we will be is what we’re becoming.
Which has so much to do with how we began.
