Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

To Re-live a Moment...

Imagine being handed a chance, akin to magic, where by accident or design, a moment is given back to you, a mystical moment you'd want to relive, a moment that comes back to you like starburst. If that were possible, l would lightly shake my memories and opt for a tiny instant hidden from view, a moment inside which I would change nothing, possibly a moment of epiphany the other humans around me would ignore.

And yes, I have such a moment tucked inside my mind. An enchanted, delicate moment of roses and a rosebush, reflecting the sacred spirit of the earth. That moment touched me with the sheen and whisper of the tender soil, as if nymphs and fairies took over and created something extraordinary.

About three or four decades ago, without being made privy to the delicate nature of roses, I decided to cultivate a rose garden in a section of the very large backyard of our new place. As Long Island soil is nitrogenous, I had no problem making an easy success of my first 55 rose bushes, and my garden prospered. Supremely happy and encouraged, I decided to graft several roses to one sturdy rose bush, without any familiarity to grafting and without knowing if the bush would accept any other rose's DNA.

A few days later, my grafted stems from five rose bushes with different colors still were attached to the main bush, if only by the cotton strips I had wrapped around the branches tightly, for them to hold the cuttings. A few people told me to give it up for it was useless because only expert gardeners would take on such a venture. Discouraged, I gave up, but before I could unwrap the cuttings, we had to take a business trip that lasted several days. That business venture had sprung on us suddenly, giving me almost no time to pack.

During the trip, I drifted around in gloom, convinced that my entire garden would suffer terribly and perish in my absence. So, the minute we returned home, I ran to my rose garden without even setting foot inside the house.

What awed me in an instant was a dreamy loveliness, surpassing any prayer for beauty. My rose garden was bursting with fragrance and color, proud of its splendid roses over the bushes' shiny green leaves. Moreover, my clumsy experiment had turned out just fine, and the grafted stems had established themselves on the mother bush, with three of them already forming tiny flower buds. Later on in summer, hauntingly, that rose bush would exhibit five different colors of roses.

But that exquisite moment, that first sight of my rose garden with its tender hues, beautiful beyond all beauty, despite my absence and neglect, charmed and touched me deeply, making me revere the divinity and forgiving nature of land. A divinity that had communed with me and rewarded my enthusiasm, ignorant and inexperienced though I might have been.