Take Root, Then Bloom

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Sometime to be got through first, some unfinished business; time still to be served; a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” - Bette Howland, W3 A Memoir

Finding a way to “bloom where we’re planted” has been a tough thing to accomplish during the era of pandemic, isolation, and disaster. We may not have even been planted where we find ourselves today. Seeds are tossed by the wind or dropped by birds into the most unlikely (and uninhabitable) places. And without a seed taking root, there is no bloom to be found.

I never imagined that I would leave my ten-room Craftsman house on a tree-lined street in Oakland, California to downsize into the kitchenless art studio that my father built behind our family home. But the studio is “planted” in the center of an exotic garden that my mother began cultivating in the 1940s: giant birds of paradise with their black beaks and white plumes, as well as orange and blue ones; purple irises poking out of baby tear moss, and cymbidium orchids. My favorite blooms are what’s now matured into a Camellia forest that hugs my second story windows, welcoming hummingbirds who visit and peer in at me.

I call my treehouse Selimah’s Sanctuary, and for all the challenges it’s posed over the years to live in a place without a kitchen or insulation, and to reside in a city I vowed I’d never return to, I made myself willing to take root here, and my life has been more fruitful than I ever imagined.

Even if where you or I land is a toss by the wind or a hard drop, with an adjustment to our expectations and a willingness to take root, it’s possible to bloom . . . and perhaps become as spectacular as a forest.

Keep your head to the sky.

Adapted from SINCE I LOST MY BABY