Sometimes the world whirls you
It’s mid-October. You have come to a botanical garden that you haven’t visited for several years. When you set off, there were gleams of sun. By the time you walk into the garden, it’s raining heavily, almost enough to warrant turning back to the gift shop to borrow one of the huge umbrellas they keep for visitors. You consider that option, but keep walking, trying to find the swamp cypresses and the pond you remember.
You keep stopping to look at identification plaques on trees; most of the flowers you already know. The shape of the heucheras’ leaves along the path are like a wave from an old friend. A swift vision of the heucheras you have been gifted with over the years, and the faces of the friends who gave them, swims through the rain like a trembling wave of sunlight on water.
Heucheras you have known and loved and will grow no more: you don’t kiss your fingertips to them, but you might as well; they were from another life. All this from walking on a path bordered with their scalloped leaves, some burgundy, some green, all with intricate veins. The plants remind you of the ridiculous frothy confections milliners used to make—hats back in the 1930s, when a well-dressed woman didn’t leave home without one.
Do you want to own a heuchera? No. You’ve grown at least three different varieties. But seeing the shape of them now thrills you, as do the snowberries, the purple-berried callicarpas, the weeping Atlas cedars. Ting after ting of foliage on your heart. You ring like a meditation bowl.
You remember now why you love plants. How could you possibly have forgotten for weeks, months, even?
It’s still raining. Ah, here are the cypresses you’ve been searching for. The pale green of their flat needles, the brown knees of their roots that protrude from the banks, yes, seeing them is as delicious as you’d hoped.
You stand on the wooden bridge over the cypress pond for a few minutes. An Asian man is taking pictures with his phone. “Too beautiful,” he says, nodding to you as he passes. You smile back, yes.
Photo, Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia
How often in life does a person get to stand there, quiet, in the wet, stunned with happiness?
You shake yourself finally—it’s raining even harder now—and clump over the floating bridge. And there, on the other side, at the far edge of a green lawn, is a grey-barked, twisty Japanese maple. It’s shed almost all its leaves. But those that remain are a vivid red. Beneath it grow euphorbias with bluey-grey foliage.
Sometimes it feels like the world whirls you around and puts you in your right place. It’s such a surprise when that happens, it’s instant, the click of a tumbler turning in a door. You push the door open, step through, and it’s like you’re in a place that recognizes you, where even the air opens, parts, settles around you like a comfortable shirt. You can breathe.
These red maple leaves against the green lawn, these glaucous blue euphorbias take you to that place. The colours, and the clear calligraphy of each shape, whirl you to somewhere that feels like home, like comfort.
A few red leaves against the grey horizontal of a pond indented with pocks of rain. You stand in the downpour and in that instant of not moving, pass through the open door of joy.
Those of you who are alert readers will notice a real difference in this piece. When I wrote it some years ago, family things were going on and I was feeling distressed. My bolt out to the botanical garden was an attempt to find comfort. The second-person point of view, the “you” is a way of displacing emotion to a place large enough to hold it.
One reader didn’t feel the narrator was sad at all and commented on the use of words like “happiness” and “joy.” What’s your take?
Thanks, Adelia! It's not quite my usual style, so especially appreciate your feedback.
I love this!!