As fall approaches, I’ve been eager to show folks our small garden, which is finally in full bloom after working at it in the spring—clearing leaves, pulling ivy, digging into the soft and saturated soil, and putting seeds in the ground—and waiting all summer. In April and May, we were full of energy, anticipation I think it’s called, thawing out having been dormant all winter. I think it’s called dreaming—of life, colorful and abundant life.
There was one evening after putting the kids to bed—the sun setting and light diminishing—where I was digging humble holes near the hibiscus trees and Emily placed the dahlia tubers into the ground, ensuring they were at least a foot apart and would be exposed to full sunlight at all times of the day, as stated in the directions from my student’s mom who gifted us with these little potato-looking tubers in ziplock bags. We were making guesses, mostly unsure how deep to dig and predicting how the surrounding trees may fill in. And on that particular night, our work felt urgent as if it was the only time to plant those sprouts before the window of gestation closed.
And now, on this day in August at the end of the season while my sister and her family visit, I show her the wide face of the first dahlia: light pink, forming into a ball of pliable and layered petals. My sister, to my surprise, squatted, bending her knees and reaching her arms low towards the flower’s face, and wrapped her hands around the flower and inhaled deeply.
When I worked at a school 40 miles south of Jakarta, a school known for its plant life and landscaping, sort of integrated within the campus, integrated with the learning (even when you didn’t want them to, things grow abundantly in the rainy and humid climate; I once left a pair of shoes in a closet over the summer and returned to swaths of moss growing in the footbeds; also, any abandoned home quickly became scaffolding for trees and ivy and overgrowth). Near the gymnasium, there was a bounty of bougainvillea—pink and red and purple—and some wide-faced, open-handed hibiscus where I watched a teen girl jump off of—literally jump from the steps—a bus from Jakarta, maybe not having seen so many flowers in some time, sprint down the sidewalk, bend down low, and dip her nose into a flower; she went from flower to flower for a few minutes, lifting her head after each encounter with pleasant and satisfied eyes like she had just come up from water, like she had just consumed her favorite meal (in this case her favorite meal would have included some element of nasi, probably fried). She was enthralled and luminous, eyes and mouth beaming towards the ground, which caused her friends, her teammates, in their hoop uniforms, also coming from Jakarta—the city famous for its smog and incessant concrete—having been stuck in traffic on one of the few south-heading highways, to join her in caressing not only the flowers but also the leaves, even taking off their shoes in the grass, sinking their toes into the clay soil, full of a type of energy I feel in the early days of spring in Michigan when the purple crocuses first start to show after a couple of months of snow and gray when we prepare the ground for a garden.
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