By A. Tozer
If some consider that life is to be divided into four parts–and many do– then I suppose I find myself on the precipice of summer. What that means, I cannot be sure. But I do suppose that these darling buds of May (pardon the allusion) that I spent the greater part of a quarter-century sewing, should, in some capacity, soon show their true color. They may harvest beautiful exotic fruits, peripatetic petals, or even stagnant stamens, all arising from familiar roots, roots that have been established, from seeds that have been planted. Familiar seeds.
It is painful to think that with each passing day, fewer and fewer novel flowers bloom, to think that, each new flower that blossoms arises from a previously planted seed, one once held in hand–knowingly or not. The shade slightly changes, but the fragrances remain familiar, the look: bromidic.
On this precipice of summer, I cling to the knowledge that no two seeds produce the same flower. Even two seeds of identical genealogy have the luxury of differentiated phenotypic expression. But, I fear that novelty is an exclusivity of Spring. Novelty inspires those intangible yet wholly felt feelings, feelings that satiate that once felt incomparable curiosity. That love. That one love. What is summer love but a feeble attempt at the recreation of its novel predecessor? Smelling a rose for the first time, seeing a butterfly perch on a peony — seemingly unable to hurt you — it sits quiet, far enough away to admire.
Yet, it is difficult to know whether a flower is truly beautiful in the spring. You have yet to compare these buds to others and how can one truly judge something absent comparison? Judgment is comparison and comparison is the simplest form of judgment.
But, equally, perhaps not. A child’s eyes are often the most transparent–absorbing their surroundings and imbibing sans supposition. The Spring is a time for un-predicated freedom: new tastes, new smells, quickly passing ephemeral meetings that fade faster than we can enjoy them. Fading into seeds that we plant. Seeds that we pray will blossom into the flowers we idolized through the back-seat windows of unknowingly long car trips. Flowers that might have always blossomed, yet we cling to our seeds with fearful fervor. What will become of them?
Even the most confident of farmers cannot know the fruit of their harvest until it has come to fruition. Until each row is plowed, every seed sowed, how can they truly know? We cannot know. We must enjoy the fruits of our harvest without comparison to foreign fields or expectations from planted predictions. This is the summer. Welcome to the summer.
