The days are growing longer – a couple of minutes more of light are gained every week as we round the corner to spring. It’s evident in the re-blooming of this epiphyte – more traditionally known as a Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter cactus. It has trouble making up its mind about when to bloom, guided only by the duration of light, which doesn’t always align to our human-imposed calendar of holidays. I like that it ignores the human timeframe completely. Nature will always guide us right.
As for this time of the year, it’s alway proven tricky. We still have a healthy few weeks of winter left, and as much as I’d love to jump forward to spring, if we leap too quickly we run the risk of losing our spring buds – the lilacs and azaleas and rhododendrons already tightly coiled and ready to burst forth into bloom. A late freeze will take them all out (and since we had a number of lilacs blooming in the late fall we’ve already lost those). Treacherous terrain, time-wise. We wait, perhaps more eagerly than any other time of the year, and wait we must.
In such purgatorial moments, I slow my mind through daily meditations. Working to maintain a mindfulness that lasts through the day, I strive to stay entirely in the moment, focusing only on what is happening around me – not what has passed or what may come. If appreciated and inhabited fully, the present moment is all one needs to be happily content. There is beauty enough in a day, no matter how gray or dull it may at first glimpse appear.
As our pendulum of light swings back in the direction of spring and summer, I pause to examine the vibrant blooms of this loyal plant, which I’ve had for a couple of decades now. One day it may be passed on to one of my niece or nephews, and it may go on blooming long after I’m gone, reminding someone else to find the beauty of a day in a single shaft of sunlight upon a bloom.
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