I roll out of the truck hitting the pavement like a cannon ball. In the palm of his hand there are several individually labeled small plastic bags, each one containing seeds of a different kind.
You gotta be kidding me… I groan, … This is going to take FOR-E-VER! Why can’t we just go to Home Depot and get some of their ready-to-go, instantly blooming perennials…? , but he doesn’t seem to hear any of it, lost in a world all of his own.
He picks up a seed and looks at me,
You want a miracle…? Here’s a miracle, right in front of your nose.
It’s just a seed…
Yes, that’s what you see… but inside this seed… hidden… inside this tiny, lonely, easily ignored and trampled upon, seemingly insignificant seed, there is packed away an entire universe bursting with life, and energy, fruits and flowers and more seeds… ready to explode, creating more universes all around ...
For a few moments I forget to breathe, just listening to him, feeling I was awarded a front row seat featuring the Creation of the Universe…
But, before any of that can happen, he pauses as if remembering something, the little seed must fall into the ground… and die.
Die? I gasp, suddenly transported back to reality.
Yep, he sighs simply, no other way. Sometimes I wish there were… but, from the way he sounds, I wonder if he might be talking about something else other than zucchini and tomatoes.
Unless the little seed is willing to lay down in the ground and die... He suddenly interrupts himself, and motions with his hand,
Let’s get to work… I follow him slowly in a funeral procession for the bunch of little seeds. He turns my vegetable garden into a small burial plot for broccoli, squash, basil and cilantro and proceeds with the flowers… My face is so long it drags along the grass as I drag my feet behind. We make small signs and put them next to the neatly sown rows. For some reason, I feel like crying. How can something that's supposed to be happy and festive turn into something so depressing and sad?!!!
What’s up? He lifts his head and looks at my morose body parts sprawled all across the lawn. I am a dirge incarnate. He shakes his head and bursts into laughter,
Cheer up, you silly goose… this is not about death… at least not all about death… This is about LIFE, real life… this death is just a passage into life … that is Life indeed.
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