Thursday, March 21st 2013

           The first sign of spring revealed itself in the form of a small group of flowers. The garden in Baum has been full of dried leaves and yellowed stems of last year’s plants. Today, three tiny purple flowers have sprouted from the dark, moist soil. They look like baby tulips. Five lavender petals curve upward and fan out just enough at the top that I can see hints of gold inside. Holding up each flower head is a stout green stem. Each stem is a rich green closest to the soil and gets lighter in hue. The tip of the stem that holds the petals is completely white like the snow that once covered the top of the soil it now grows from.

            The sight of the flowers brings out a feeling I can’t quite describe. Relief? Maybe hope. I sit back on the bench and close my eyes for a second. The park is just as it is every week: quiet. Today I enjoy the solitude. Any other day I would have been excited to see anyone entering Baum. However today I need the solitude. I need it like I need to feel as if this small group of flowers have sprouted for me. 

           Before entering the park I felt so hollow. Death on the living has way of carving the best parts of you from inside and leaving empty spaces. I wasn’t close with my classmate, but I had sat in the same room as her, learned the same stories, and felt the same urge to put stories down on paper. The news of her death has casted this blanket of sorrow and uncertainty over my peers and my friends. It has not been an easy week to watch these people stare at an empty desk the same way I stared at my grandmother's empty chair in the living room of her home. It has been a week of my hollow spaces echoing their losses. 

          When I look back down at the flowers I can't help but think about what else is buried beneath the soil. Roots of past flowers curled and shriveled and earthworms decayed thinned bodies. Though their no longer living beings on the earth they are still nestled within its soil. They still remain as a piece of this large earth. These purple flowers growing taller in the soil will too serve their purpose and they too will join the plants before them in community beneath the soil.

     The new buds on the tips of the trees branches will soon join the flowers in their arrival. Soon green leaves of different shapes and sizes will shade the park and these flowers from the hot summer sun. Come winter the leaves will brown and migrate towards the ground. The flowers will wilt too, no doubt. They will shrink back into the soil and let the brown leaves cover them like a warm blanket. For now the flowers are here, alive, and filling those empty spaces with the promise of life beyond the soil.