blending African folklore with modern storytelling
A Winter Rose
Against my home's cold wall, a pink rose blooms.
My favourite, the yellow one to its left, behaves like a winter rose, standing in silence, observing the garden, stingy in its restful stance, stingy in colour, nectar and scent.
Not the pink rose. Defiant like a warrior of old, looking down on fourteen others that I tend with equal measure. When the garden was holding its breath for the spring bloom races, I tended them all. No favouritism directed the secateurs. No. Not even when I planted them on a vision of scent wafting through open windows. My nonpartisan heart loved them like a mother even-handedly loving her children.
Winter, though, loved the garden differently. The sun fell shyly on some plants and fiercely on others. The light, too, was different. The green lawn became dry and uninviting. Forget-me-nots and daisies bowed with tired heads, sending bees to lavender whose purple blooms had already become powder when touched. Nights were cold; frost and chilly winds ripped past corners. The only sign of growth sat in green buds on hard, brown hydrangea stalks. A promise of plate-sized blooms in September.
But no rose blooms in winter.
Of all the plants in my garden, roses are my soul-filler, my mood changer, my memories of child-eyes full of wonder walking beside me - children long grown into adults. The first flower from a lover's hand; still his flower of choice many years later; still picking a rose to honour a lifetime union.
Such is the power of a rose.
The pink rose knows that.
It carries the sun of summer and the memory of bees and birds within. It remembers the hands that tended it, chose it, when more beautiful flowers competed for a vase and a place in my heart.
It harbours the joy of overcoming autumn's hot days and cold nights; fierce unseasonal storms filled its leaves. Maybe it recognised the emotions of those who touched it fleetingly and sometimes more deliberately.
Now, it stands open-faced, turned towards me, as if sensing the changing seasons within me.
None of us walks through life without our seasons changing. The roles we once played are no longer relevant. The once trusting eyes of our children now look down with love on their own offspring. A lifetime of love and sacrifice has shifted on its axis - the people who needed you then now need you differently. Like the pink rose who calls me open-faced in the off-season, different things call us to question our life seasons:
The why of passions, long forgotten.
The music suddenly calling; music on the instrument you never learned to play.
An urgency to create with your hands.
Someone else's exciting life you have not yet tried to live.
A part of yourself you had never explored.
To breathe the scent of a grandchild again.
The pink rose and I face each other with the knowledge of changing seasons. Open-faced. Turned towards the sun of life. A return to Earth's ancient wisdom.
If you find your pink rose, perhaps linger a while; touch its petals with a soft hand; breathe in the fragrance of its seasonal defiance. Stay a while.
Some of life's blooms can only sprout from plants that have grown strong over many years.