Tiny Blossoms

Early this morning, I slipped out the back door of our home through our dew-saturated fresh mown lawn. I was barefoot and my feet rapidly accumulated a covering of wet grass on my “mission.” I am still not completely sure what motivated me. A friend accuses me of “having too little on my plate and that’s why I get these wild ideas.” In fact, I wanted to surprise my wife with a bouquet of fragrant lilacs to enjoy with her morning coffee and crossword puzzle. We have two blooming lilac trees—a double white one on the northern edge of our property and a deep lavender one on the southeastern corner. As I write, their soft gentle aroma permeates the kitchen. There is only one problem. The delicate lilacs all have brown spots all over them. I discovered they are all past their prime and, try as I might to find better ones, the only lilacs I could collect from my yard was this aging brown-flecked bouquet.
I am not “a flower person” but I can’t get flowers out of my mind. As I glance out the window, there is an amazing array of other flowering trees, shrubs, and bushes in various stages of bloom for all over the neighborhood to enjoy. That doesn’t take into account all the flowers my wife has planted and all the wild flowers that are popping up in the adjacent field. What a spectacle and to think how often I’ve fail to be stopped to appreciate the contribution they make to my world, at least for a short season.
I actually started this story and the paragraphs above a week ago. Normally when I have an idea for a story, the “start” and “ending” are pretty much in place and the thoughts in between seem to flow without much effort. This time the ending just wasn’t there and the story went nowhere. I missed my normal self-imposed deadline. A friend e-mailed me to say he’d been waiting since 5 AM for my story which never came. I e-mailed a backup story but this one about the blooms wouldn’t go away.
My children are very precious to me and I am now experiencing the unbelievable joy of two wonderful grandchildren. I was quite busy over the weekend with a full schedule of lectures from delightfully inspired instructors. In the midst of my classroom concentration, I got a call that I will never forget. Doctors discovered that our anxiously anticipated and yet-to-be-born grandchild had died. I will never experience the joy of this baby’s presence here on earth. Gratefully the mother is doing OK. Through my tears I faced the timeless question that generations have asked but no one can answer. Why?
This morning I found a tiny “baby bouquet” on a bush I’d never noticed before. The tiny inch-wide cluster is populated with 14 dainty miniature white blossoms. Each of those blossoms has 4 delicate golden stamens surrounded by 5 micro-sixteenths of inch long petals. There is no discernable fragrance. The whole thing is so small that I had to pluck it to focus clearly enough to savor its delicate beauty. My hand could literally hold a hundred or more this size and there is not a vase small enough for proper display. It’s far too small to give to anyone else to appreciate. Suddenly, I knew the original story wasn’t about picking the abundant aging lilac blooms at all. It was about choosing this delicate micro-treasure from all the surrounding landscape. I know that our loss was welcomed into good and loving hands to be featured in an awaited eternal garden.