blossoms

Last Sunday afternoon, I walked by a huge branch that had been torn off a budding fruit tree, lying on the grass between the sidewalk and the street. Whether the branch ended up there by the action of wind or vandals I couldn't say, but it struck me as an unnecessary violence against a lovely bit of creation. I was about ten steps beyond the branch when I suddenly remembered the Easter branch.

When I was a child, in the weeks before Easter, my mother would bring in a slim branch from the frozen woods beside our home. On the mornings that we had eggs for breakfast, or on baking days, mom would carefully blow out the eggs, preserving their shells intact. After school or whenever I had a moment to spare, I'd decorate these hollow eggs-- tenderly, carefully, with coloured markers, in patterns and designs only a child could come up with. The decorated eggs were threaded with string, the string looped, and the egg hung on the dry branch. By the time Easter rolled around, the branch had transformed from a dead-looking, dry bit of a twig to a budding wonder, to a showy symbol of the power of life, all leafed out in the freshest green imaginable. It felt like magic.

So, walking last Sunday, I decided to walk backwards to the fallen branch, and pluck a few twigs to bring inside. I didn't know how long the branch had lain there or what hope there was in waiting for the dry buds to swell and burst. Monday, nothing. Tuesday, nothing. Wednesday, nothing. This morning at breakfast, I noticed that there was a single blossom on one little twig. One blossom. It was lovely and I thought that might be all the vandalized twig could come up with. When I paused in my work for lunch, there were over thirty blossoms out. I stopped counting in the late afternoon. Lovely beyond words. And fast! And to think I could have sat before those twigs and watched each blossom unfold. Amazing.