Crocus

My friend Nancy gave me the crocus bulbs that now bloom in my front yard, back in the fall of 2015. We weren't particularly close at that time, our friendship was just beginning to grow, a tender but hardy little shoot. A few weeks after my dad’s funeral, one afternoon I found a brown paper gift bag on my front porch, with a handmade condolence card and a 10 pack of assorted crocuses. How lovely, I thought, and planted them haphazardly, pushing the fallen maple leaves aside and digging down into the earth with a tablespoon.

The first couple of years they grew, they were hardly what you would call spectacular. A tiny purple flower might push up, try its luck at blooming only to have its delicate stalk trampled by some enthusiastic squirrel digging up last autumn's treasure, or the neighbour's cat making quite sure we knew that our front flower bed was primarily her w.c. They arrived like single introverts at a party - one purple one shyly pushing up over here, another yellow one hiding way back behind the Japanese maple. Their show, such as it was, was modest at best, not to mention over practically the moment it began.

Over time, a curious thing happened. Those initially solitary little blooms began to appear in groups - first of two or three flowers, then five or six, then a dozen. The more numerously they were clustered, the more glorious and bright each individual flower appeared. They found and showed not only strength, but beauty, in number.

This spring, when I consider these small and mighty bursts of colour, my penchant for metaphor invites me to think about friendship. I am invited to notice how friendships start out delicately, tentatively, in a moment of recognition, a haphazard seed planted. What begins as a small and modest display of one's true colours, a leaning towards the warmth of being known and seen, gathers energy and confidence as the seasons pass, the colours enriched by the company of other kindreds, by the rooting into the rich soil of belonging.

Easter weekend has just come and gone, the crocus have bedecked the ground in paschal hues of saffron and purple, announcing the holy and redemptive arrival of spring's full glory. A dear friend came today with tea, and cake, to prepare my garden for the coming season, offering this act of love in my time of illness, when my treatment means I am forbidden from digging in the soil. I sat outside wearing the head covering sewn by another friend, sipping on soup prepared with love for me by another, warm slippers on my feet also a gift from a chosen sister, and I felt myself the bright crocus bloom at the very centre of the cluster. Protected, encircled with like souls, held up and strengthened by the power of community.