This beautiful onion was left in the lake house all winter long, from some time last fall. Trapped in the dark cold, it managed to create life for three new onions that are drawing nutrients from its mother. So many things to be grateful for in that tiny moment- thank God there is no mold or rancid smell. The entire plant is a perfect specimen of health.
Gardening always mirrors life. I came late and the meeting had already started, but I snuck in the kitchen to have a chat with the one person I had been meeting to talk to all day. Our eyes met as if we were in mid-conversation, and the third person in the room suddenly felt like an outsider, and politely said, I will leave you two girls alone to have your girl-time talk.
But he is kind, and we laughed and encouraged him to stay, as it wasn’t anything he couldn’t hear anyway, but he might be bored.
Within 40 minutes, we three were all transformed by what happened in that kitchen, where no one else could hear us. We did laugh, but we ended up discussing a struggle, which led each one of us to share some pivotal, poignant moments in each one of our lives. Something we would rarely share with anyone else, but because we knew what we had to say would help the other one, we shared these uncomfortable tales.
Each of us left with far more information than we ever expected to gather that night. Each one of us a bit lighter in our step, and transformed by what we had learned from each other.
Isn’t it funny how you meet people that are so nice, without even realize that the reason they are kind is that their lives were once so hard, and they learned to overcome something so hard.
My onion is safely buried in the ground now, with the stalks of the three new onions reaching for the sky.