Skeletons & Seeds

“Geronimo!” she yelled as she put two argyle sock-covered feet into pant legs that were not flared enough at the bottoms. She was beginning to like herself on the outside and love herself on the inside though she still battled those demons of self-doubt and questioning. She was always questioning…if she had done the right thing, enough of the right thing…if she could do more. Just the evening before now, she had been inspired to paint – and pulling a cigar box of water-colored pigment from beneath her plants, dropped a picture of that little boy who breathed life into her world. She’d picked it up and ran her hand across the heart-shaped framed face of her then six-year-old pictured in his red tie and black fedora. Had three years gone by that quickly that it felt as if it were yesterday? Yes, they had.


She knew he was learning, growing and experiencing everything – understanding only a fraction of it, similarly to her own situation. What concerned her most were the affects that many, many, too many to count situations of abuse, neglect…of psychological warfare upon her child, were having. Intrinsically, she understood that the Mom title afforded her the “best preventative medicine” award, but time moved so quickly. Too quickly. It was like that skeleton and seed analogy she’d drawn the other day; the similarity between the strength of a skeleton and potential of a seed.

She had walked past the wind-blown and weather-worn remnants of a lily seed pod for months. There were no flowers remaining, no foliage, and no green - just the skeletal remnants of a pod which had, at one point, held the seeds for another year of beauty promised by that unseen potential. Had she been there in that garden in September, she may have cut them back when the flowers faded, thinking that besides helping the plant to rejuvenate roots before autumn, nobody enjoys looking at the stalky reminders of a summer almost gone. But she wasn’t there in September, or even October. On the first day of February, she found those skeletal memories and recalled the passing of another year. The pods had transpired the wind, all elements of accumulation and even a quick judgment by the would-be gardener, had she been present. They were beautiful, those masterpieces of transparent mirrors between what was and what might be. She picked them and put them in a vase to admire. To remind. What had her perspective overlooked or neglected when she was certain she was seeing the whole picture?

Mostly, it is the difficulty with the space-time continuum. As in – there does not seem to be enough space to ignore what happens to her little boy all the time. Reflections. She reminisced on those lilies again. They were thought to be dead, used up, done – and yet, she picked them because they were perfect. Like her little boy – no matter the wicked elements put-upon him, he was still perfect; beautiful. He was worth preserving with her greatest concoction of preventative medicine. And at this point as a weary traveler, it may come down to a huge “Geronimo” of faith.