Life is a Packet of Sunflower Seeds

This could have been a summer from my youth. The heat was sticky, heavy – a wet winter coat that could not be doffed and hung up on the rack to dry. The storms were violent, pounding and alive with the smell of ozone and wet garden. The mornings were covered in dew and mist and the evening sun dropped past the horizon after I went to bed. There was something new to notice every day, and something new to think about every night.

The fireflies are fewer. The bats no longer swoop low after insects in the dusk. If there were peepers, I didn’t hear them. If I need reminders that fifty years have elapsed since summer and I were young, I have only to look a little deeper to find them.

I tried to grow sunflowers this summer. Again. The voles and jays appreciate my efforts. Of the more than fifty seeds I planted, six survived. The victims were eaten before they ever saw the sun or were bitten off (by who-knows-what) about three inches from the ground soon after sprouting. Three survivors are stunted, weak imitations of what their genetic code intended. One is about my height, and in the process of unfurling a flower the size of two hand-widths. The final two represent my dreams from June, having grown to heights of over six feet, with dinner plate flowers that follow the eastern sun until it disappears around the southern corner of our building; they then wait patiently for the next day’s sunrise so they can again move to the rhythm of the morning.

I took selfies with the sunflowers yesterday, aiming my phone upwards to catch my face with the sunflowers towering above them. The result was an odd combination of the expected and the unexpected. The sunflowers looked exactly as I knew they would – big, bold and golden. The surprise was that I’d never seen the woman in the photos before. The matins mirror fails to reveal details that the sun and a camera are only too happy to detail.

This could have been a summer from my youth measured in feelings. Everything still feels big, new made just for me. But it is not, and never will be again. I only need to look a little bit deeper to see this. Sometimes it bothers me. Mostly though, it just feels good to stumble over that little bit of wonder every day, year after year after lucky year.

Screw the whole “life is a box of chocolates” metaphor. Hell, I’d be embarrassed to admit what I’d be willing to eat if it were covered in chocolate. Life is a packet of sunflower seeds. Seeds are dreams of youth. Most of them just aren’t going to happen. A handful will happen, but they aren’t as grand as you thought they were going to be. But a couple of those seeds…. damned if they don’t just grow into something freaking magnificent.