“What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?” David Whyte
In 2013, we sold all of our belongings, and when we say all, we mean everything but the baby books and wedding albums. During a particularly busy moving sale, a woman in a blue dress was gathering up all our wedding china and asking us questions about where we were relocating. As I explained, we were heading off on a nomadic adventure, starting with applying for dual Citizenship in Italy, she looked up and said, “Why can’t you just grow where you were planted?”
As I stood there, knowing in my heart she didn’t really want an answer to her question, watching her count the forks and saucers that were part of the porcelain set, my mind flashed back to a vivid memory I hadn’t thought of in years.
Growing up, part of my American Dream was a picket fence. I don’t know why, but when I thought of my future husband and children, there was always a white picket fence surrounding a sweet home that made me feel stable and comfortable, and happy.
This memory was unfolding as the woman in the blue dress inspected every angle, looking for chips and cracks in an effort to get the very best price for the dinnerware…
Shortly after we were married and started having kids, we bought a piece of property with a vintage cottage perched on a carpet of green grass on an island near Seattle. Ron set to work straight away on building the most quintessential hand-crafted picket fence that gently rolled with our country property.
The woman in the blue dress then explained how she couldn’t possibly carry all of our china into her home and asked if she could have our delightful picnic basket for free. “Yes, of course,” I say dreamily as the story is still unfolding in a silent answer to her question she has long forgotten…
The day the picket fence was completed, I set about making lunch for our 2- and 3-year-old boys. I was pregnant with our daughter, and I was so relieved they could play in the now-fenced yard, safe and secure, without constant supervision. Then I heard a knock on the door…
The woman in the blue dress was now sitting on my porch, drinking a nice tall glass of lemonade I served to her as she was exhausted from buying all of our treasures and needed to replenish before heading on her way.
As I opened the cottage door, my neighbor from over the hill and through the woods was standing there holding my son, Max’s, hand. Apparently, he had paid her a visit. What? How? But the fence… In that moment, he burst into a run, scaled the flowering dogwood tree in the corner of our property, swung from a sturdy branch, and catapulted himself over the picket fence before the paint on it was even dry.
As the woman in the blue dress headed to her car, she was trailed by our three kids helping her carry her newly purchased items. As she drove down the tree-lined street, glancing at our picket fence in her rearview mirror, I wondered why I had crossed her path that day.
I have thought about her question over the past 12 years, so many times from various vantage points around the globe.
This is what I would say to her today if she were on my porch drinking lemonade, encircled by our picket fence, asking me, “Why can’t you just grow where you were planted?”
Did you know every plant you see in this garden and forest was once a seed transported by the wind, perfectly shaped to float, glide, or spin through the air and land right here at your feet?
Do you see those plants growing near the river? They were once seeds gliding on the flowing water and finding themselves on these verdant banks.
Did you know some seed pods are designed to explode and throw the seeds a good distance from their parent plant?
And what about the plants that use animals to carry their seeds, and some even come to a new landscape unsuspectingly on the backs or shoes of humans?
Did you know, Mrs. Blue Dress, that for a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone? The shell cracks, its insides come out, and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it may even look like complete destruction.
How do you know, or I know, or anyone knows how many times we were planted before ending up here?
Here is what I know for sure. A seed knows how to wait. A seed is alive while it waits, and it knows when the time has come to PLANT itself in the unknown.
Growing where we are planted is not an ending; it is a beginning that only looks like stillness to the naked eye.
