Decades have passed since that chilly fall day in 1985; when with my mother, I got on my knees and soiled my levi's jeans while pulling weeds from an old garden in front of our new home. The previous owner must have loved her flowers, there were remains of several types of flowers scattered by the cold winds that were heralding a brutal winter ahead. Thorny stalks rose from the ground like hands reaching out for mercy; that's all that was left of what was once a blossoming rose bush. What looked like a family of skinny bald men huddled in the corner trying to keep warm was actually a bed of sunflowers whose most radiant crowns of gold I later found gnarled into little curls on the black gardening soil. The air was heavy with the scent of onions or was it chives? I couldn't distinguish the difference between the two at the tender age of five. As I pulled weeds and dead flowers from the soil I pulled a few of them here and there further filling the air with its pungent perfume.
Somewhere in the corner of the garden I found what looked to be another wild onion stalk growing from the ground. I reached out to pluck it out of the earth and discard it on to the pavement with the rest of my pile of unfortunates when something inside me told me to stop. I did. My Mother called out to me "Son, go on and pull that onion out." I looked at her after a moment of contemplating and replied "No Ma, this isn't an onion... It's a rose." My Mother laughed and told me roses have thorns. She was right about that but I knew this was no onion. She told me one more time to throw it out and to this I turned around and defiantly said no. "This is a rose Mommy you just don't know it, but I do." looking back at this memory I'm not quite sure why my Mother didn't reprimand me for my insolence, instead she smiled one of her big smiles and said, "Ok Son, if you say its a rose, its a rose. But its your job to take care of the rose and make sure it blossoms ok?" to this I agreed and we continued on weeding out the old dead plants and tilling the soil in preparation for those that were to come.
We collected dried leaves and I buried my goldfish into the soil. We sprinkled coffee grounds and tea bags over the garden and framed it with mulch. Day in and day out I would rake the garden floor till the ground was soft and forgiving and I watered my "onion" everyday. While my Mother planted her seeds I'd spend time talking to this "onion" telling her how beautiful she will be and how no one else but I could see this right now. My Mom poked fun at me for three long months giggling along with her friends that I was the best onion farmer she had ever seen.
On days that I acted my age my Mom would remind me that I had my "onion" to attend to. After awhile she would even sit on the front porch steps and smile with her big cup of coffee while I talked to this green stalk that jetted out of the ground. She helped my put up a plastic coating over it so the winter wouldn't give it frost bite. "So much trouble for an onion" she would say
Winter came and went, and though the groundhog didn't see his shadow, spring came rumbling along into the ides of March. On one beautiful spring day I came down the front porch in my tattered levi's knees now worn thin and stained with the paint of black soil and my pair of chuck taylors heavy with mud still caked to the traction underfoot. There in the early spring sunshine I had come to find that my onion had begun to blossom. From its green stalk peeked a sliver of springtime yellow. In a few days from that morning it would have bloomed into the most radiant tulip I had ever seen in my life. I screamed and jumped for joy in what must have been the gayest moment of my childhood. I woke my Mother and my Father and pulled her out of bed in her robe to see what at the time I thought was magic. "It's a rose it's a yellow rose Mommy! It's a rose!" I had my doubts. I waited and waited and waited for this "onion" to blossom and after a few weeks of the green stalk being a green stalk I began to question what it was I originally saw. Was the "rose" actually a "rose" like I had thought? Or did God transform this "onion" into a "rose" the way the fairy godmother transformed Pinocchio into a real boy because he wanted it so bad? These were thoughts that filled my young mind at the time, but I later found the simplistic lesson and beauty in the story above.
This is the way I remember the story. It may be wrong, but it is the way I remember it. Funny how we remember things the way we want and forget things the way we have to just to live.
You were always beautiful. You were always a survivor. You just needed someone to till your soils and shield you from some of the season's harsher climates. I took one look at you and saw more than what met the eye, I saw you blossom before you even imagined you could. When everyone laughed and said you were an "onion"- when you yourself thought that so, I nourished your roots with water and my love, with my faith and my trust and I prayed to God that the spring would come and put an end to the long bitter winter.
Now look at you. Radiant and beautiful, everything I said you were, everything I believed you would be. I look at you and see one of the most beautiful women I will ever see in my life. (after my mom) And again I feel like that kid in his tattered jeans and chuck taylors; dirty and tired but so full of joy at believing before seeing. Or seeing before seeing... Faith is a beautiful thing.
I Remember You. I'll always remember the day you blossomed- everything else like the winter before the spring I have forgotten. Stay beautiful my tulip
