Unseasonable Blossoms

Susan’s encounter with her cherry tree.

Some of you know that we spread Susan's ashes under her cherry tree when it was in peak bloom. You may not know the story of why this tree was so special to her. This journal entry was on an extinct app so I had to transcribe it from a hard copy that she gave to Robin Kucklick who gave her the tree. He kept it all these years. She would probably have pruned it into a more streamlined poetic form but I give you the whole unpasteurized version here. Minus many commas. I hope you can relate.

• David

Unseasonable blossoms

A story of amazing grace by Susan Osborn

Journal Entry October 13, 2004

I feel so so sad and discouraged. Maybe it is this way every Autumn and I forget. But this year the sadness seems deeper and more permanent. Everything around me is dying and I feel like I am too.

I noticed yesterday that my breathing is shallow. I have not been taking the time to inhale fully. With all my attention on the exhale, have I forgotten to receive? What else am I missing?

Maybe this is what 54 looks like. Getting older. Prime time over. I have had such a "successful" life and somehow I still feel so empty. What shall I do with the rest of this life?

Astrology explains it by saying that I'm a late bloomer. Just how late is late anyway? It seems I've spent most of my life thinking I should be somewhere other than where I was. In my busyness have I missed my season?

Home at last, sitting on our deck in the afternoon October sun, I put down my journal. I've just returned from a long, extremely hot tour in Japan. As usual, I have been overwhelmed by the kindness and graciousness of my hosts. Every time I go there, I am shown the best of this amazing culture and her people. It is so humbling. However, I am completely exhausted when I return home. After 10 days of rest I still feel drained and empty, caught up in some kind of downward spiral of tangled thought and worry.

As I sit I finally began to feel the mind storm inside subside. Suddenly aware of where I am, allowing the gentle, penetrating warmth of the sun to relax my tired shoulders, I sigh, and sit back, at last letting go. And in that softening I remember that this is the 17th anniversary of my mother's death. Has it really been that long? Before she died, we had the great fortune to become friends, as well as mother and daughter, and I grew to rely on her wisdom and council when I needed it. Over the phone, long distance, or over her kitchen table, we would confer about life. In someways she had she had been my best friend. As it often is with someone you really love, the relationship continues on after death. Ours had grown deeper and richer as I grew older, and she did not. I realized I needed her again across from me, with a cup of coffee and her deep knowing. If she were, I would I would say, "Mom, what should I do? What would you do? Have I made a mess of my life? Am I lost? Have we made a mess of it all? What is going on?"

Of course, she is not here, across from me on the deck, and there are no answers. But somehow, just the asking is helpful. I close my eyes and feel my breathing quiet. My body finally surrenders to the chair, my senses open, and I drift. A soft breeze brushes, my cheek. Two crows call back-and-forth as they fly overhead, and I breathe in the warm, deep fragrance of Autumn. Slowly, I become aware that I am no longer just a tangle of thought and worry. Someone is inside me, silently watching it all. I rest there with that one.

The distinctive, shrill cry of an immature eagle… SKREEEEE... arouses me from my reverie. I don't know how long I have rested here, but the sun is now lower in the sky, and I pull my wool scarf closer in around my shoulders. Opening my eyes, I gaze out over our yard and the forest at the ravine's edge. It is the "golden hour", you know, that time of day when everything and everyone looks beautiful? A big leaf maple tree, blazing crimson, and gold is draped in deep green moss. The little Japanese maple is doing it's reverse autumn dance, and is turning from vermillion to green. The lawn is confettied with leaves blown from the silver trunked alders along the road. A tawny brown deer nibbles at a bright red apple she's grabbed down from our gnarled old apple tree. One bite. Two bites.

Then, something catches my eye, something about the cherry tree, growing just off the deck, some unexpected flash of pink amidst the mottled green and orange leaves. Must be some trick of the light I think. I decide to take a closer look, get up from my chair, stretch and step down off the deck to stand beneath the tree. And there, unbelievably, are several delicate pink cherry blossoms. How strange. This is not their season at all. I know that there are autumnal blooming cherry trees, but this is not one. Since being gifted with this reminder of Japan, some 14 years before, my springtime ritual has been to watch and wait for the first tight pink buds in late February and then daily track the slow explosion of pink and white blossoms. When it had completely bloomed, we'd spread a blanket and picnic there, our own small Hanami, looking up through the pale, rose lace to the bright blue April sky.

But this is October, not April. Yet, there are blossoms. How odd, I think. I reach in my pocket for my small digital camera. I want to document this strange and wonderful phenomenon. As I think back now, I realize, that this first day, it was just that, just documenting. Something to show my friends. It will take me a few days here beneath the tree, looking up into these unseasonable blossoms for something else to break through, and for me to really begin to see. Those first photographs are indeed evidence of something. Later, they would become much more. They would become love songs.

The following day, the day after and the next, I awaken, wondering, whether the blossoms are still there, expecting them to be gone, an anomaly that soon disappears. To my amazement, they remain and are joined by more day after day. Through the camera lens I enter an intricate world of subtle color and depth. There are curtained corridors of palest pink and lavender, sensuous mountains and valleys of dark and light, canyons of tender, living flower. I am weeping. The beauty, my soul has hungered for is revealed in every petal jeweled with dew and every delicate stamen dusted with golden pollen. So, I move in. Closer and closer in, the macro lens takes me. I am stunned by the variety of shape and hue, all on the same tree. I wonder why I never stopped to look that closely at a cherry blossom before. I feel the sadness and discouragement with my life and the world slip far into the background. Where have I been going so fast? What was it that I had wanted so badly? maybe it has all been about arriving here at this one cherry tree impossibly blooming in the autumn of my life in my own front yard.

Slowly, I recognize that I am falling in love. I am unreasonably happy, filled with a deep joy. No longer am I just looking at the blossoms. I am seeing, and in some strange way I am also being seen. An ecstatic communion is taking over my life. Either I am taking photographs in all weather under the tree, or I am at the computer loading, and examining the resulting images. A photo comes up on the screen that is so outrageously beautiful that I spontaneously burst into uncontrollable tears, and cry inconsolably until I am spent. Blown away by what I am seeing, the beauty pierces my heart, the way only true beauty can. A shield that has protected me from feeling is shattering, image by image, blossom by blossom… whole symphonies of startling, aching color and form. I am devastated by what the camera is revealing in me, for I realize that if I can perceive it, it must be in me. A long painful separation from myself, and the rest of creation is dissolving. What I had braced myself against is now breaking through. My mind stops. There is nothing but this beauty. I move to the center of my being and with that movement, a desire to create something new and beautiful with my life is being born in me.

Each day I return to the tree. October into November the days grow shorter and colder. All of the trees in our yard are bare, except for the evergreens and this one cherry tree. Every morning I throw my jacket, scarf, and hat on over my nightgown, put on my boots and fingerless gloves, grab the camera and head out into my yard. Some days only one or two flowers and on others, a whole branch has exploded overnight into blossom. I begin to wonder, is this personal? Is the tree somehow responding to my attention?

I become the tree's student. I learn what time the sun comes through the giant cedars surrounding our home so I can catch the play of light on and through the petals. The rain, freezing cold temperatures, and snow arrive with December and January. The ground is alternately frozen and then wet and soggy around the tree, my boot prints imprinted in a muddy circle. Like little black Sambo I am turning to butter. This tree is blossoming out of season, is it also possible for me? I photograph blossoms dying on the tree, frozen and elegant. Unpollinated by bees, the petals will not fall. I learn to get up early to catch the dew and rain drops as they melt in the morning sun. I learn how to move with the wind and catch the moment when the blossoms are still. All through February and March she blossoms, and I learn how to listen deeply to this one tree.

Spring finally arrives, and inexhaustibly, the tree bursts into full bloom. I am satiating some profound and lifelong hunger with this grace and beauty. I begin to notice that all of this life is rising from deep silence. The tree and the photographs become the center of my life. Autumn to Winter and on into it's normal flowering season this one cherry tree, extravagantly blossoms, concluding with April's slow, ecstatic, pink explosion, and then, the final glorious days of pink snow. The last blossom falls on April 23. Unbelievably, my cherry tree has blossomed for six profoundly transformative months. By the time April rolls around I have taken more than 2500 photos of individual cherry blossoms and changed the way I see everything.

So what happened to me in those six months and in the time since then? I am just now beginning to understand. I stepped through the looking glass into an entirely new perception of life and way of being. I see that we are living in a world of complete mystery and enchantment, and that I am absolutely part of it. The living vital beauty of nature is the doorway to a new and radically creative way of life. And beauty is also the path. This beauty is all around us, if we only have the eyes to see and the heart to respond.

This is not a story about a special cherry tree, nor is it about me being a special person. Life responds to love. Those we love, never disappear, but become part of us, the universe is a miraculous place, full of mystery and wonder, and each of us is a unique and special being, intricately connected to it all. Human beings have the ability not only to perceive beauty but the capacity to be inspired by it to create more beauty. The sense of emptiness that we try to fill with more… recognition, food, clothing, cars, houses, gadgets… is only increased by this attempt to fill. The real filling begins with a tiny flame of curiosity, a longing that burns within every soul, and that yearns to burn more brightly. Beauty is the fuel. Joy is the destination.

I was lost, and finally stopped. In that stopping, I noticed the tiniest miracle of life. In carefully observing that miracle, I noticed that I am a miracle. There is nowhere to get to, but here, no time, but now. Each moment of this precious life is an opportunity to grow, to learn, to create something beautiful, to blossom. This is my season.

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost, but now I'm found

I was blind, but now I see.