Just beyond my screen

I'm sitting at my grandmother's table. It's a gift passed on from her most recent downsize into assisted living, and one of the first that my uncle made. The date stamp hidden in the mechanics of leaf-extension tells me it was hand-crafted in 1996. I visit it often, parting the oaken halves like Moses parted the waters in search of spilled juice, dribbled milk, and another up-ended cup of tea. Lunch with the four-year-old: always an adventure.

There's a nicer gift from my preschooler present on my table top: a little flower pot, stamped with a sparkly clover, over-flowing with wild things planted from a packet. It's the wholesome base of his goodie-bag from St. Patrick's Day: mercifully short on sugar with far more dirt than chocolate gold. The packet of wild-flowers came home damp, so we planted them right away, and I can't believe how quickly they've sprung. Did they come pre-germinated? At any rate, they've been the perfect little mix for impatient little gardeners. Specks of green within days of seed-sprinkling. I noticed before he did.

Less than a month later, those seedlings have climbed over the terra-cotta lip, springing ever taller, bending towards the light. Their colour is a balm for winter-weary eyes. Just wait, little wild things, soon your sisters will be pushing up outside. Outside, in the land just newly released from what almost felt like permafrost. Demi-frost? The prairie Persephone must have eaten six pomegranate seeds, not three. But today, on the first taste of double-digit weather (I speak in Celsius: think "no need for jacket weather"), I'll forgive her.

But my phone is chirping text messages, the baby's waking, and my clock tells me it's time to make the soup.

Thus ends my first free-write experiment.  For more information, and to view other writers' creations of magic in the moment, visit the Extraordinary Ordinary here.

Comments

  1. What a gift--those flowers.

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    Replies
    1. Absolutely! Thanks for stopping by :)

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  2. So happy for bits of green in your life as you wait for warmth and sunshine and growth outside. XO

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    Replies
    1. Oh me too. I think there may be buds on the tree outside, but that may just be wishful thinking. Happens every year :)

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