Color in the Growth
Just like the spring shoots that appear on the willows outside my window. For me, maybe that new part is a skill. Maybe the trip I took or the time I said yes and regretted it until I did the thing and then knew it had been a good yes. Now it’s a colorful attachment to my bones, which are no longer growing but are supporting and persisting.
“Before it seems possible, feasible, or wise, it’s sending out new branches that are smooth and shiny with a hint of optimism.”
There was a period of dormancy without this growth. A cold winter that was longer than I’d like to admit. But my spring has come (ironic, since winter is my favorite season.) Spring is here for the willow too. Before it seems possible, feasible, or wise, it’s sending out new branches that are smooth and shiny with a hint of optimism. They reach directly for what they want – the sky – and their path is straight. There are no gnarls because there’s nothing they’ve had to grow around yet. By next season they will be more weathered but for now, they have some verve and pizazz.
My growth does too, and it represents everything I’ve done that’s new and different and sometimes awkward. An older plant can still produce new shoots which can be unabashedly colorful. Those fresh branches on the willow are still attached to it and my growth is likewise a part of my body on a cellular level.
“Even though the energy expenditure required by growth is substantial, sharing my resources is a way of bringing smoothness into the fold of my grittier bark.”
New isn’t always better, of course. I’m not making a hero out of what’s new in order to discard the old. Old is the kind of intelligence only born of experience. The plant has both - and don’t we all. That those two can coexist, though, is the magic. That’s the thing that carries the plants through a blinding snowstorm that buries even the tips of their branches.
I am still capable of assimilating freshness and I’m the healthier for it. Even though the energy expenditure required by growth is substantial, sharing my resources is a way of bringing smoothness into the fold of my grittier bark. The new parts may not seem congruous with the rest of me, but that’s alright because they stretched the plant to the sun and me to my brightest self.
They added color and vibrancy. I’d like to believe that plants appreciate things like a lovely shade of flower petal purple or the deep mahogany of a smooth bark. Not in the same way as us, of course. Their perception exists on an entirely unknowable, novel, and mysterious level.
So the plant and I have stretched and grown. It hurts a little but in a way that helps to understand just how important it is to keep adding. That the foundation I already had, those years around the sun, is solid enough to provide a base on which to expand. That’s the rest of me and it’s the part that understands that hurt will pass.
And that fresh and new is one of the better ways for that passage to proceed apace.