028: Seed season
In Which the Author Builds out an Extended Metaphor About Personal Growth Using Seeds
[You can listen to this post in audio form here]
Song of the day: Bloom, by me. Kimaya Diggs.
Planting seeds & thinkin’ about grief, as per usual
In December, I ordered 2,200 plant seeds. 16 different plants. Most of the seed packets had 20-50 seeds in them. But one had over a thousand – that packet cost just three dollars and was nearly empty – it felt like air. I poured the seeds into my palm and was delighted: each seed was smaller than a poppy seed by a lot. Smaller than a pencil dot. You could probably fit 10 of these seeds into a poppy seed.
They’re coral bell seeds. Each one of those seeds grows into a leafy plant about 10 inches wide. In the summer, they send long, pink shoots up to two feet high, and each shoot is bedecked with little bell-shaped flowers. They’re hardy plants – mine never even wilted through the winter, and they’re planted outside in a shady corner. They simply waited and slumbered under the snow.
This year, I planted about 30 coral bells. The rest of the seeds are in a cool corner in my basement, and every year, my plants will produce more seeds. I’m sitting on an infinite well of coral bells.
We had a couple parts of our yard tilled over the weekend – a section where we’ll plant sunflowers, ginger, pumpkins, cosmos, marigolds, cilantro, mint, and bell peppers; and a section where we’ll have wildflowers. Next year, we’re getting 3 fruit trees. Baby steps.
Our farm share starts up in early June, and in May, I’m driving up north to pick up 40lbs of organic beef from my friend’s farm. I’m excited for summer!!!! I can’t wait to go swimming, get ice cream, lay in the hammock while the dogs run around, and burn things in the fire pit by night, surrounded by fireflies. I’m a real summer girl. It’s my season. And it’s not winter any more…but it’s not summer yet. It’s strangely difficult to come to terms with, because I’ve been waiting for the end of winter for so long, and in my mind, there are 2 seasons: winter, and summer. The transitions between the two are tough.
But it’s seed season.
This is the season to fill small cups with black earth and nestle seeds into a divot formed with your fingertip. To cover the seeds over and water them and then…to wait. Even after the waiting, the tiny shoots that appear need time to grow strong before they’re planted in the places where they’ll grow. A seed is an idea of an idea of an idea, or a potential potential potential. I imagine picking mint for a mojito, roasting pumpkin seeds in the oven, watching crows pick at the centers of the sunflowers. The seeds themselves only imagine the sun and how joyfully they’ll move towards her. Maybe before that, they only imagine the darkness and quiet to be found under a thin layer of rich earth. Or before that, when they’re started in cups on my porch. The sound of the sliding door as I go in and out of my house.
It’s also birth and death season for me.
My birthday is in early May! The fourth anniversary of my mother’s death is four days after that. I will be learning more about her, about myself, about my grief, and about the world forever. Each year, I am further away from her and living a life that has increasingly less connection to her. I still drive her car every day – it’s at 302,500 miles – but even that has started to fray as the car’s issues pile up. One day, it will be gone, too. One day I may have broken all the pottery she left behind. One day, the blanket she made for me may be so threadbare it drifts away on a breeze. One day, the socks I stole from her closet will wear through and enter the rag bucket – and then wear through even as rags and go to the landfill. One day, even this body that she made will be worn through and drift away on a breeze.
The changing of the season into spring always sends a message to the lizard part of my brain and body: it’s the time of year when something bad happened. It makes my birthday fucking tragic, to be honest! And I’ve always been a big birthday princess – I like reflecting, being loved on, and celebrated, and I hate that just a few days after my birthday, the worst day comes around. And then a few days later (or, sometimes at the same time), Mother’s Day comes, too. It’s a dense week of beginnings and endings. This year, I’ll also be preparing to plant other seeds – packing a suitcase to fly to Nashville to record my third album. It will be A Time.
This year, I’m feeling some shifts. I think my grief has changed shape again – it’s always doing that. A couple months after my mom died, I read Crying in H Mart, and the author mentions that her mom died four years ago. I remember thinking how is that possible? How could four years pass after someone’s mom dies? I literally sat there, with the page open, baffled. Trying and failing to do the math. I’ll be newly 32 when that happens for me, I thought. I couldn’t possibly ever be 32. None of it makes a shred of sense.
I prepared my mama’s beautiful body for burial, and the other night I had a dream where I was in that room of the funeral home with the funeral director. In the dream, I looked at my mother’s body from head to toe. Then, dream-self looked at my mom’s right hand. I could zoom in on it so closely that I could see the raised veins and everything in HD. Then I woke up and I was going “Help! Help! Help me!” Jacob startled awake and was like “what’s going on?!?!?!” And I was like “Uhhh….I’m not sure, goodnight,” and fell completely asleep again. Someone who is skilled at dream interpretation, please hit my DM’s with your take on this.
But yeah, my grief is changing shape.
Last year, I finished writing a book about my mom and about grief. Since then, a handful of people have read it and I have a handful of structural edits to make before I start sleuthing around for an agent. I left the book completely alone for six months, and recently started reading bits of it again. Ok, this is chaotic to say, but it’s actually SO good and I’m really excited to do the work I need to do on it and then find the best agent in the world and then get it published and everyone buys it and loves it and cries while reading it and every tear shed makes me stronger and more powerful.
I have to plant more seeds tomorrow so that the seedlings are strong enough to survive being transplanted in a few weeks. I have ideas moving in my head that need water and love and good sunshine so they, too, will be strong enough to be transplanted into the real world as pieces of art. My car is full of potting soil and supplies for other projects. My heart is full of wishes for summer.
But at the same time, I’m trying to be present. My constant wish for summer means that it’s easy for me to live in a state of waiting, a state of this isn’t *now* yet. It’s probably not a great way to live. So I’m trying to use my literal seeds in cups on my porch as a guide this year – to rest quietly because even though the snow is gone, it’s still resting season. To trust that things are moving in invisible places, that the tiniest changes are afoot, but to wait for, and enjoy the sprouting. The tiny gossamer leaves. The strengthening stalks. The deepening roots. To weather the shock, joy, and loss of transplant. To watch the strongest plants – ideas – dreams – actions take root and reach for the sky. To harvest the fruit – later – to be nourished by it, to gather the seeds, and then to return to the quiet season for rest.
Idk, it sounds good but who knows if I’ll be able to accomplish it. I’ll try, though. I hope you will, too.
Xoxo
K
